Controlling spin in antiferromagnetic insulators
Researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim have discovered a new method for controlling spin carried by quantized spin wave excitations in antiferromagnetic insulators.
Elementary particles carry an intrinsic angular momentum known as their spin. For an electron, the spin can take only two particular values relative to a quantization axis, letting us denote them as spin-up and spin-down electrons. This intrinsic two-valuedness of the electron spin is at the core of many fascinating effects in physics.