Will investigate ultrafast magnetization of materials

Chemists talk about chiral molecules – molecules that are each other’s mirror images. Physicists have now discovered that materials can also briefly acquire chiral properties, affecting their magnetism. Wallenberg Academy Fellow Matthias Geilhufe will now study and develop the theoretical understanding of this exciting phenomenon. 

Chirality means that something exists as two mirror images, like your hands. Light can be polarized so it gains chiral properties, so it becomes circularly polarized light. When researchers irradiated materials with this light, they discovered that it can cause chiral phonon excitations in the material. These can be described as quantized oscillations in the material’s crystal structure. In turn, this affects the electrons’ spin, a quantum mechanical property that gives rise to magnetism. Materials irradiated with circularly polarized light can therefore briefly become magnetic – even if the material otherwise has no magnetic properties. 

Dr Matthias Geilhufe from Chalmers University of Technology will now develop the theoretical understanding of how chiral-induced magnetic effects arise and function. For example, the effects that researchers have seen are much stronger than those predicted by current theories. Why?  

Researchers believe that, in the future, chiral-induced magnetism could be important in spintronics, where electron spin is used to build energy efficient computers, for example.

Photo Patrik Lundin