Researchers find spins acting like real bar magnets in a new material
An international team of researchers from Switzerland, Great Britain and Germany has discovered an excellent new material for studying the behaviour of spins. The researchers have shown that the spins in the colourless salt of chemical formula LiErF4 behave like real bar magnets. They also managed to switch on and off the magnetic properties of the material using quantum mechanics. HZB scientists supported the research team from the Laboratory for Quantum Magnetism (Switzerland) and the London Centre for Nanotechnology on their measurements. The results are published in the journal Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1221878).
The researchers had the ideal conditions for their experiments at HZB. They had to cool the material down to 0.04 degrees Celsius above absolute zero in order to study the spins. At the Laboratory for Magnetic Measurements (LaMMB) at HZB, they performed highly precise heat capacity measurements that were crucial for characterizing the phase transition in the material. Then they studied the samples by neutron scattering at the Berlin neutron source BER II. At the single crystal diffractometer E4, the team imaged all of the spins in the material and were able to show that the arrangement of the spins was antiferromagnetic. Having access to both LaMMB and neutron scattering facilities proved especially fruitful for the researchers’ studies at HZB. The research team could namely employ complementary methods that delivered different and mutually reinforcing information about the material. Their measurements were complemented with other experiments at the Swiss neutron source SINQ at the Paul Scherrer Institute.
With the discovery of this salt, researchers now have a material that provides a perfect test bed for researching other quantum mechanical mechanisms. The information service “ScienceDaily” reported the results and provides further details about the user experiment at BER II on its website.
Paper "Dipolar Antiferromagnetism and Quantum Criticality in LiErF4"
- Alternating currents for alternative computing with magnetsA new study conducted at the University of Vienna, the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, and the Helmholtz Centers in Berlin and Dresden takes an important step in the challenge to miniaturize computing devices and to make them more energy-efficient. The work published in the renowned scientific journal Science Advances opens up new possibilities for creating reprogrammable magnonic circuits by exciting spin waves by alternating currents and redirecting these waves on demand. The experiments were carried out at the Maxymus beamline at BESSY II.
- BESSY II: Heterostructures for SpintronicsSpintronic devices work with spin textures caused by quantum-physical interactions. A Spanish-German collaboration has now studied graphene-cobalt-iridium heterostructures at BESSY II. The results show how two desired quantum-physical effects reinforce each other in these heterostructures. This could lead to new spintronic devices based on these materials.
- Langbeinites show talents as 3D quantum spin liquidsA 3D quantum spin liquid has been discovered in the vicinity of a member of the langbeinite family. The material's specific crystalline structure and the resulting magnetic interactions induce an unusual behaviour that can be traced back to an island of liquidity. An international team has made this discovery with experiments at the ISIS neutron source and theoretical modelling on a nickel-langbeinite sample.