Magnetic vortices defy melting moment
The behaviour of magnetic vortices controls many physical properties of high-temperature superconductors, including their ability to carry current without resistance – a classic hallmark of supe...
New superconductor gets ready for applications
Magnesium diboride gears up for the real world following a rash of technical breakthroughs
Spintronics turns a corner
Devices that use the spin on electrons move a step closer
The magnetic mysteries of atom clusters
Small groups of atoms can add unusual magnetic effects to their peculiar thermal properties
A new spin on magnets
The spin on electrons could be used to create super-dense recording media
Organic magnetism finally demystified
In the January issue of Physics World, Kazuyoshi Tanaka of the Department of Molecular Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan, describes how Bakhyt Narymbetov of the Institute for Molecular Science in O...
Louis Néel and Lochlainn O’Raifeartaigh
Louis Néel was born in Lyons in 1904 and dedicated his career to the study of magnetism. In 1932 he discovered antiferromagnetism – a form of magnetism in which the ‘spins’ on n...
Magnetism’s standard model gets a facelift
The standard model – developed by Pierre Weiss in 1907 – treats paramagnets as systems of non-interacting magnetic dipoles. The theory successfully describes the behaviour of paramagnets &...
Magnetic media: faster and smaller
Conventional magnetic recording works by changing the magnetisation states of different domains. An in-plane applied magnetic field takes a few nanoseconds to ‘switch’ the domain state. Bu...
Magnets help tell left from right
Like these so-called chiral molecules, circularly polarized light also comes in right and left-handed varieties, and can be used to produce an excess of one type of molecule. However, circularly polar...
