Making magnets flip like cats at room temperature
In today’s world of ever-increasing digital information storage and computation, the next information storage revolution seeks to exploit a novel effect arising from the relativistic physics of Einstein, which allows to effectively convert a new type of magnet into cats. Through this effect, these magnets can flip themselves through the internal motion of their own electrons. One can almost describe these new types of magnets as relativistic magnetic cats.
In these new magnetic materials, a current running through the magnet can flip the direction of the magnetization depending on the direction of the current. This novel phenomenon in physics, dubbed spin-orbit torques, links the spin-degree of freedom of magnets that gives rise to the magnetization, to the charge degree of freedom that allows for current-charge motion inside the material. Continue reading "09.06.2016 – High-profile Spin+X publication: Room-temperature spin-orbit torque in NiMnSb"