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...
Imaging antiferromagnets at the atomic scale
S Heinze and co-workers from the University of Hamburg and X Nie and colleagues from the Forschungszentrum Jülich have used “spin-polarized scanning tunelling microscopy” to image an ...
Hendrik Casimir and John Ward
Hendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir was born in the Hague in the Netherlands in 1909 and received his PhD from the University of Leiden in 1931. After working with Bohr in Copenhagen and Pauli in Zurich, he...
