News Physics

Newfound ‘altermagnets’ shatter the magnetic status quo 

The materials have attracted attention for their versatile potential 

An illustration of atoms in an altermagnet shows a grid of alternating blue and purple shapes, rotated with respect to one another.

Altermagnets are made of an array of atoms that alternate both in the orientation of their spins (illustrated by purple and blue) and in the orientation of the atoms.

Libor Šmejkal and Anna Birk Hellenes

By Emily Conover

For the first time in nearly a century, physicists have identified a brand new type of magnetic material.

Crack open a physics textbook and you may read that scientists classify magnetic materials into two main types: ferromagnets and antiferromagnets.