Scientists Win Prestigious Award for Discovering a New Class of Magnetism

Three European scientists have won a prestigious award for finding a new type of magnetic material. The European Physical Society chose Jairo Sinova, Libor Šmejkal, and Tomas Jungwirth for this honor. The researchers have named this third category of magnets "altermagnetism," which behaves in very unusual ways.

For more than one hundred years, experts believed that only two kinds of magnetic order existed. These older groups are ferromagnets, which possess magnetic force, and common antiferromagnets, which lack this force. However, this newly found magnetic group combines the best characteristics of both traditional magnetic systems.

Altermagnets do not have a net magnetic power, but they still produce highly polarized electrical currents. These materials also show extremely fast magnetic movements, which are perfect for advanced electronic devices. This special mix could help engineers build much faster and more efficient electronic computer memory devices. In addition, researchers can use these materials to study advanced physical concepts, such as unconventional superconductivity.

The project started as a partnership between teams in Mainz, Germany, and Prague, Czech Republic. Libor Šmejkal worked closely with both groups while completing his research over a period of eight years. He led the development of the main ideas that finally proved the existence of altermagnetism.

Since the team shared their findings in 2022, scientists worldwide have studied this topic. In their earlier work, the team identified hundreds of different materials that might have these properties. Since then, experimental researchers have successfully confirmed the existence of this new class using several methods. The physics society will present the formal award during a conference in Austria in September 2026. Professor Jairo Sinova stated that even well established areas of science can still offer unexpected discoveries.