🔬 Physicists finally observe magnetic vortices predicted 50 years ago
🔬 Physicists finally observe magnetic vortices predicted 50 years ago
An international team of researchers has experimentally observed magnetic vortices in an atomically thin material — a phenomenon predicted by theory in the 1970s.
The study, led by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin, confirms key predictions of two-dimensional magnetism.
The experiment used an ultrathin crystal of nickel phosphorus trisulfide (NiPS₃) only one atomic layer thick.
When cooled to about –150 °C, the material entered the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless (BKT) phase.
In this state:
• atomic magnetic moments form tiny vortex structures • vortices appear in pairs rotating in opposite directions • the structures remain surprisingly stable despite being only a few nanometers across
When the temperature was lowered even further, the researchers observed another transition — the six-state clock phase, where magnetic moments can point in only six symmetric directions.
For the first time, scientists captured the full sequence of predicted phase transitions in a single material system.
This discovery could have important technological implications.
Magnetic vortices may enable:
• ultra-dense data storage • nanoscale electronics • quantum technologies • next-generation magnetic sensors
The next challenge is to find materials where similar effects occur closer to room temperature, which could bring vortex-based technologies into real devices.
The results were published in Nature Materials.
