To study the behaviour of antiferromagnets, Atatüre and his colleagues use an imaging technique known as diamond quantum magnetometry. Of the two, antiferromagnets are more stable than ferromagnets, but they are more difficult to study, as they don’t have a strong magnetic signature. The swirling topological textures are found in two main types of materials: ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. Working with colleagues from the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore, the Cambridge researchers used emergence to uncover monopoles spread over two-dimensional space, gliding across the swirling textures on the surface of a magnetic material. The idea of emergence is the combination of many physical entities can give rise to properties that are either more than or different to the sum of their parts. However, there is an alternative strategy to find monopoles, involving the concept of emergence. This theoretical result relied on the extreme separation of north and south poles so that locally each pole appeared isolated in an exotic material called spin ice. “If monopoles did exist, and we were able to isolate them, it would be like finding a missing puzzle piece that was assumed to be lost,” he said.Ībout 15 years ago, scientists suggested how monopoles could exist in a magnetic material. But in one of his foundational equations for the study of electromagnetism, James Clerk Maxwell disagreed.”Ītatüre is Head of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, a position once held by Maxwell himself. “In the 19th century, it was hypothesised that monopoles could exist. “The magnets we use every day have two poles: north and south,” said Professor Mete Atatüre, who led the research. The results, which could be useful in enabling next-generation logic and memory applications, are reported in the journal Nature Materials.Īccording to the equations of James Clerk Maxwell, a giant of Cambridge physics, magnetic objects, whether a fridge magnet or the Earth itself, must always exist as a pair of magnetic poles that cannot be isolated. The research has also shown the direct connection between the previously hidden swirling textures and the magnetic charges of materials like hematite, as if there is a secret code linking them together. This is the first time that naturally occurring emergent monopoles have been observed experimentally. These monopoles glide across the swirling textures on the surface of the hematite, like tiny hockey pucks of magnetic charge. The researchers observed that magnetic monopoles in hematite emerge through the collective behaviour of many spins (the angular momentum of a particle). Researchers led by the University of Cambridge used a technique known as diamond quantum sensing to observe swirling textures and faint magnetic signals on the surface of hematite, a type of iron oxide.
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