Physicists observed a very strange new type of behavior in a magnetic material when it’s heated up. When the temperature rises, the magnetic spins ‘freeze’ into a static pattern, a phenomenon that normally occurs when the temperature decreases. Their findings were published in Nature Physics today,
At cooler temperatures, the spins in the material form random patterns, where each pattern whirls like a helix with a particular twist. When heating up the material, the spins choose one of the particular helix patterns, a phenomenon that normally occurs when the temperature decreases in magnetic materials. Credit: Radboud University
Neodymium is not like conventional spin glasses, where there is random mixing of magnetic materials. It is an element and without significant amounts of any other material, shows glassy behavior in its crystalline form. The spins form patterns that whirl like a helix, and this whirling is random and constantly changes.
These kinds of phenomena are not found often in nature. There are very few materials known that behave in the wrong way. Another well-known example is the Rochelle salt, where charges build up and form an ordered pattern at a higher temperature, where at a lower temperature they are randomly distributed.The complex theoretical description of spin glasses was the subject of the Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Parisi in 2021.
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