Evidence for exotic magnetic phase of matter

Science Daily  February 22, 2022 An international team of researchers (USA – Brookhaven National Laboratory, University of Tennessee, Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Switzerland, Japan, China) started their investigation of strontium iridium oxide (Sr3Ir2O7) starting at high temperature and gradually cooled the material. With cooling, the energy gap gradually narrowed. At 285 Kelvin electrons started jumping between the magnetic layers of the material but immediately formed bound pairs with the holes they’d left behind, simultaneously triggering the antiferromagnetic alignment of adjacent electron spins. They showed that their model comprehensively explains the experimental results. Understanding the connections between electrons’ […]