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The article reports experimental discovery of a new class of magnets, termed altermagnets. It is based on the theoretical prediction of altermagnetism, published by the team from the Institute of Physics two years ago. In altermagnets, both spins and atoms on neighboring sites in the crystal are mutually rotated. This generates a combination of ferromagnetic-like and antiferromagnetic-like properties, traditionally considered as mutually exclusive, as well as properties that are unprecedented.
Description
In altermagnets on adjacent magnetic atoms, not only the directions of spin polarization alternate (shown in purple and blue), but also the shapes of the atoms themselves (shown by the tilt of the electron densities in two different directions). The blue beam shows a photoemission experiment on a synchrotron that was used to demonstrate altermagnetism.