MIT AI Hardware Program

Making More Magnetism Possible with Topology

Peter Reuell | Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering

MIT researchers show how topology can help create magnetism at higher temperatures.

Complex 3d illustration of a clear cube denoting the outline of a molecule with reddish spheres as its atoms. Two pairs of screw-like objects appear connected by electricity amid various blue spheres and arrows. Waves of electromagnetic radiation appear to hit and bounce off the top of the cube.

October 10, 2023

Researchers who have been working for years to understand electron arrangement, or topology, and magnetism in certain semimetals have been frustrated by the fact that the materials only display magnetic properties if they are cooled to just a few degrees above absolute zero.

A new MIT study led by Mingda Li, associate professor of nuclear science and engineering, and co-authored by Nathan Drucker, a graduate research assistant in MIT’s Quantum Measurement Group and PhD student in applied physics at Harvard University, along with Thanh Nguyen and Phum Siriviboon, MIT graduate students working in the Quantum Measurement Group, is challenging that conventional wisdom.

The open-access research, published in Nature Communications, for the first time shows evidence that topology can stabilize magnetic ordering, even well above the magnetic transition temperature — the point at which magnetism normally breaks down.

Complete article from MIT News.

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