Phys.org February 14, 2024
Altermagnets have a special combination of the arrangement of spins and crystal symmetries. The spins alternate, as in antiferromagnets, resulting in no net magnetization. Rather than simply canceling out, the symmetries give an electronic band structure with strong spin polarization that flips in direction as you pass through the material’s energy bands resulting in highly useful properties more resemblant to ferromagnets, as well as some completely new properties. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Colombia, UK) has proved the existence of altermagnetism. They provided the confirmation using photoemission spectroscopy and ab initio calculations. They identified two distinct unconventional mechanisms of LKSD generated by the altermagnetic phase of centrosymmetric MnTe with vanishing net magnetization. Their observation of the altermagnetic LKSD could have broad consequences in magnetism – exploration and exploitation of the unconventional nature of this magnetic phase in an extended family of materials, ranging from insulators and semiconductors to metals and superconductors that have been either identified recently or perceived for many decades as conventional antiferromagnets… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Illustration of weak and strong altermagnetic LKSD. Credit: Nature, volume 626, pages517–522 (2024)