SLAC CONFIRMS ALTERMAGNETISM IN MANGANESE TELLURIDE WITH POLARIZED X-RAYS, A MAGNET TYPE AIMED AT SPINTRONIC MEMORY

Summary from the TLDR Hardware newsletter

Altermagnets are a third kind of magnet alongside ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. Like antiferromagnets, they have no net magnetization, so stray fields can't flip them, but they can still carry spin-polarized currents, so their data can be read out. A SLAC-lead team shot polarized X-rays at maganese telluride and saw a directional signal that a conventional antiferromagnet can't produce. This work, published in Science, targets a usecase within spintronic memory.