skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Understanding and controlling complex states arising from magnetic frustration

Abstract

Much of our national security relies on capabilities made possible by magnetism, in particular the ability to compute and store huge bodies of information as well as to move things and sense the world. Most of these technologies exploit ferromagnetism, i.e. the global parallel alignment of magnetic spins as seen in a bar magnet. Recent advances in computing technologies, such as spintronics and MRAM, take advantage of antiferromagnetism where the magnetic spins alternate from one to the next. In certain crystal structures, however, the spins take on even more complex arrangements. These are often created by frustration, where the interactions between spins cannot be satisfied locally or globally within the material resulting in complex and often non-coplanar spin textures. Frustration also leads to the close proximity of many different magnetic states, which can be selected by small perturbations in parameters like magnetic fields, temperature and pressure. It is this tunability that makes frustrated systems fundamentally interesting and highly desirable for applications. We move beyond frustration in insulators to itinerant systems where the interaction between mobile electrons and the non-coplanar magnetic states lead to quantum magneto-electric amplification. Here a small external field is amplified by many orders of magnitude by non-coplanarmore » frustrated states. This greatly enhances their sensitivity and opens broader fields for applications. Our objective is to pioneer a new direction for condensed matter science at the Laboratory as well as for international community by discovering, understanding and controlling states that emerge from the coupling of itinerant charges to frustrated spin textures.« less

Authors:
 [1]
  1. Los Alamos National Laboratory
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
OSTI Identifier:
1042994
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-12-21829
TRN: US1203071
DOE Contract Number:  
AC52-06NA25396
Resource Type:
Technical Report
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY; AMPLIFICATION; ANTIFERROMAGNETISM; CRYSTAL STRUCTURE; ELECTRONS; FERROMAGNETISM; MAGNETIC FIELDS; MAGNETISM; NATIONAL SECURITY; SENSITIVITY; SPIN

Citation Formats

Zapf, Vivien. Understanding and controlling complex states arising from magnetic frustration. United States: N. p., 2012. Web. doi:10.2172/1042994.
Zapf, Vivien. Understanding and controlling complex states arising from magnetic frustration. United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/1042994
Zapf, Vivien. 2012. "Understanding and controlling complex states arising from magnetic frustration". United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/1042994. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1042994.
@article{osti_1042994,
title = {Understanding and controlling complex states arising from magnetic frustration},
author = {Zapf, Vivien},
abstractNote = {Much of our national security relies on capabilities made possible by magnetism, in particular the ability to compute and store huge bodies of information as well as to move things and sense the world. Most of these technologies exploit ferromagnetism, i.e. the global parallel alignment of magnetic spins as seen in a bar magnet. Recent advances in computing technologies, such as spintronics and MRAM, take advantage of antiferromagnetism where the magnetic spins alternate from one to the next. In certain crystal structures, however, the spins take on even more complex arrangements. These are often created by frustration, where the interactions between spins cannot be satisfied locally or globally within the material resulting in complex and often non-coplanar spin textures. Frustration also leads to the close proximity of many different magnetic states, which can be selected by small perturbations in parameters like magnetic fields, temperature and pressure. It is this tunability that makes frustrated systems fundamentally interesting and highly desirable for applications. We move beyond frustration in insulators to itinerant systems where the interaction between mobile electrons and the non-coplanar magnetic states lead to quantum magneto-electric amplification. Here a small external field is amplified by many orders of magnitude by non-coplanar frustrated states. This greatly enhances their sensitivity and opens broader fields for applications. Our objective is to pioneer a new direction for condensed matter science at the Laboratory as well as for international community by discovering, understanding and controlling states that emerge from the coupling of itinerant charges to frustrated spin textures.},
doi = {10.2172/1042994},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1042994}, journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 2012},
month = {Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 2012}
}