A team of researchers at the University of Augsburg has discovered a groundbreaking method to turn a soft magnet into a hard one using nothing more than moderate uniaxial stress - pressure applied in a single direction. Their findings were recently published in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters.

Physicists from the University of Augsburg succeeded to distinguish chiral orders with similar magnetization but opposite sense of rotation through electrical measurements at low temperatures. This is relevant for fundamental research on complex magnets and with respect to possible applications for magnetic data storage. The results were published in the renowned journal Nature Physics.

Three researchers from India and China will visit the University of Augsburg for their research fellowship sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH). Each researcher will spend two years researching in different chairs. The researchers include two scientists working in the field of experimental condensed matter physics and a mathematician specialising in computational mathematics.

Over the next two years, Alexander von Humboldt fellow Dr. Prashanta Mukharjee will be carrying out research on novel quantum magnets. What the team of physicists at the Center for Electronic Correlation and Magnetism at the University of Augsburg hopes to achieve from the research project with regard to quantum information technology and why the guest researcher from India also has an interest in teaching.

High-resolution capacitive dilatometry down to Millikelvin temperatures in combination of synchrotron, muon and neutron spectroscopy uncovers antiferromagnetic correlations in the strongly valence fluctuating Kondo lattice CeIrSn

Cooling is a long-standing technological challenge. Standard cooling cycle based on vapor compression exploits expensive helium gas to reach temperatures near absolute zero. Adiabatic demagnetization known since nearly a century could be a viable alternative if compact and durable paramagnetic materials were available. A team of researchers from the University of Augsburg used their recent experience in creating quantum-disordered magnetic states to design a promising new material for adiabatic demagnetization cooling.

Breaking a magnet into two pieces, reveals a north and a south pole in each of them. Independent magnetic monopoles have been known as emergent excitations in one special class of magnetic crystals only. Researchers of the University of Augsburg together with international collaboration partners found a new flavor of magnetic monopoles in a material which is even electrically conducting.

A Chinese-German research cooperation involving the University of Augsburg has demonstrated properties in a metal that cannot be explained by the standard theory. The results were obtained on a special metallic compound with unusual magnetic characteristics – scientists call it magnetic frustration.  The cooperation observed a novel, “quantum critical behaviour” in the metal at very low temperatures and at high pressures and strong magnetic fields.