Magnets are pretty simplistic with their south pole, north pole, and attraction properties. However, a team of scientists have found a way to manipulate magnets atomically. Magnetic properties are used in technology and communications for processing, and this new manipulation method would have implications in fast and energy-efficient future data processing technologies. In today's data hungry society, as called so by one of the lead scientists, this new development will open up many new avenues. By controlling the "spin" of the magnets holding important data, the speed can be manipulated.
Magnetic materials are chosen for such a task because of a force called exchange interaction. This is aided by the flow of north to south pole exchanges. By manipulating magnetic atomic state, the exchange can also be made more efficient. This was done using ultrashort laser pulse excitation, which is the most powerful stimulus available to researchers. Light was used to optically stimulate specific atomic vibrations of the magnet's crystal lattice. From here, structure of the material went disturbed and distorted.
According to Jorrit Hortensius from Technical University of Delft, they optically shook the lattice of a magnet which is made of alternating up and down small magnetic moments.
The crystal was shaken for a while. Then the team measured if the magnetic properties evolved directly in time. After the shaking exercise, there were antiferromagnet changes in the system (opposite of ordered magnetism). There exercise effect left the magnet similar to an everyday magnetic we use on fridge or in toys, for a brief time.
It lasts less than a millionth of a millionth of a second or a few microseconds. It lessens the recording time used in modern computers.
"It has long been thought that the control of magnetism by atomic vibrations is restricted to acoustic excitations (sound waves) and cannot be faster than nanoseconds. We have reduced the magnetic switching time by 1000 times that is a major milestone in itself," said Dr Rostislav Mikhaylovskiy, associated with the study published in Nature Materials.