Quantum Materials out of Equilibrium
Maia Vergniory co-authored the feature story in Physics Today
Maia Vergniory, an associate researcher in the Department of Solid State Chemistry, is featured in the May issue of Physics Today as one of the authors of the feature story, Quantum Materials Out of Equilibrium.
An antiferromagnet becomes ferrimagnetic under laser light. (a) Cobalt fluoride is normally antiferromagnetic at equilibrium, with magnetic moments (red arrows) that are spin up at corner sites and spin down in the center of its unit cell. The net magnetic moment is zero. (b) In its laser-induced distorted lattice, CoF2 becomes ferrimagnetic, with magnetic moments that are both spin up and spin down, but whose net magnetic moment is now finite. The displaced atoms (relative to the antiferromagnetic lattice) produce that net moment.
© 2022 American Institute of Physics