Get the latest tech news
Physicists Magnetize a Material with Light
MIT physicists created a long-lasting magnetic state in a material, using only light. The results provide a new way to control and switch antiferromagnetic materials, which are of interest for their potential to advance information processing and memory chip technology.
In a study appearing today in Nature, the researchers report using a terahertz laser — a light source that oscillates more than a trillion times per second — to directly stimulate atoms in an antiferromagnetic material. Antiferromagnets could be incorporated into future memory chips that store and process more data while using less energy and taking up a fraction of the space of existing devices, owing to the stability of magnetic domains. Over repeated experiments, the team observed that a terahertz pulse successfully switched the previously antiferromagnetic material to a new magnetic state — a transition that persisted for a surprisingly long time, over several milliseconds, even after the laser was turned off.
Or read this on Hacker News
