MIT News November 28, 2019
Classical computers rely on massive amounts of electricity for computing and data storage and generate a lot of wasted heat. MIT researchers developed a circuit architecture that uses only a nanometer-wide domain wall in layered nanofilms of magnetic material to modulate a passing spin wave without any extra components or electrical current. In turn, the spin wave can be tuned to control the location of the wall, as needed. This provides precise control of two changing spin wave states, which correspond to the 1s and 0s used in classical computing. In the future, pairs of spin waves could be fed into the circuit through dual channels, modulated for different properties, and combined to generate some measurable quantum interference. Researchers hypothesize that such interference-based spintronic devices, like quantum computers, could execute highly complex tasks that conventional computers struggle with. The advance takes a step toward practical magnetic-based devices, which have the potential to compute far more efficiently than electronics…read more.
An MIT-invented circuit uses only a nanometer-wide “magnetic domain wall” to modulate the phase and magnitude of a spin wave, which could enable practical magnetic-based computing. Credit: Image courtesy of the researchers, edited by MIT News