Ferromagnetism is a property of certain materials that results in a significant, observable magnetic permeability, and in many cases, a significant magnetic coercivity, allowing the material to form a permanent magnet. Ferromagnetic materials are familiar metals that are noticeably attracted to a magnet, a consequence of their substantial magnetic permeability. Magnetic permeability describes the induced magnetization of a material due to the presence of an external magnetic field. This temporarily induced magnetization, for example, inside a steel plate, accounts for its attraction to the permanent magnet. Whether or not that steel plate acquires a permanent magnetization itself depends not only on the strength of the applied field but on the so-called coercivity of the ferromagnetic material, which can vary greatly.
Magnetoresistance is the tendency of a material to change the value of its electrical resistance in an externally-applied magnetic field. There are a variety of effects that can be called magnetoresistance. Some occur in bulk non-magnetic metals and semiconductors, such as geometrical magnetoresistance, Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations, or the common positive magnetoresistance in metals. Other effects occur in magnetic metals, such as negative magnetoresistance in ferromagnets or anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR). Finally, in multicomponent or multilayer systems, giant magnetoresistance (GMR), tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR), colossal magnetoresistance (CMR), and extraordinary magnetoresistance (EMR) can be observed.
Spintronics, also known as spin electronics, is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-state devices. The field of spintronics concerns spin-charge coupling in metallic systems; the analogous effects in insulators fall into the field of multiferroics.
In electromagnetism, the magnetic susceptibility is a measure of how much a material will become magnetized in an applied magnetic field. It is the ratio of magnetization M to the applied magnetizing field intensity H. This allows a simple classification, into two categories, of most materials' responses to an applied magnetic field: an alignment with the magnetic field, χ > 0, called paramagnetism, or an alignment against the field, χ < 0, called diamagnetism.
In physics, a ferromagnetic material is said to have magnetocrystalline anisotropy if it takes more energy to magnetize it in certain directions than in others. These directions are usually related to the principal axes of its crystal lattice. It is a special case of magnetic anisotropy. In other words, the excess energy required to magnetize a specimen in a particular direction over that required to magnetize it along the easy direction is called crystalline anisotropy energy.
Tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) is a magnetoresistive effect that occurs in a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ), which is a component consisting of two ferromagnets separated by a thin insulator. If the insulating layer is thin enough, electrons can tunnel from one ferromagnet into the other. Since this process is forbidden in classical physics, the tunnel magnetoresistance is a strictly quantum mechanical phenomenon.
Giant magnetoresistance (GMR) is a quantum mechanical magnetoresistance effect observed in multilayers composed of alternating ferromagnetic and non-magnetic conductive layers. The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg for the discovery of GMR.
A magnon is a quasiparticle, a collective excitation of the spin structure of an electron in a crystal lattice. In the equivalent wave picture of quantum mechanics, a magnon can be viewed as a quantized spin wave. Magnons carry a fixed amount of energy and lattice momentum, and are spin-1, indicating they obey boson behavior.
In physics, the gyromagnetic ratio of a particle or system is the ratio of its magnetic moment to its angular momentum, and it is often denoted by the symbol γ, gamma. Its SI unit is the radian per second per tesla (rad⋅s−1⋅T−1) or, equivalently, the coulomb per kilogram (C⋅kg−1).
In condensed matter physics, a spin wave is a propagating disturbance in the ordering of a magnetic material. These low-lying collective excitations occur in magnetic lattices with continuous symmetry. From the equivalent quasiparticle point of view, spin waves are known as magnons, which are bosonic modes of the spin lattice that correspond roughly to the phonon excitations of the nuclear lattice. As temperature is increased, the thermal excitation of spin waves reduces a ferromagnet's spontaneous magnetization. The energies of spin waves are typically only μeV in keeping with typical Curie points at room temperature and below.
Ferromagnetic resonance, or FMR, is coupling between an electromagnetic wave and the magnetization of a medium through which it passes. This coupling induces a significant loss of power of the wave. The power is absorbed by the precessing magnetization of the material and lost as heat. For this coupling to occur, the frequency of the incident wave must be equal to the precession frequency of the magnetization and the polarization of the wave must match the orientation of the magnetization.
The Einstein–de Haas effect is a physical phenomenon in which a change in the magnetic moment of a free body causes this body to rotate. The effect is a consequence of the conservation of angular momentum. It is strong enough to be observable in ferromagnetic materials. The experimental observation and accurate measurement of the effect demonstrated that the phenomenon of magnetization is caused by the alignment (polarization) of the angular momenta of the electrons in the material along the axis of magnetization. These measurements also allow the separation of the two contributions to the magnetization: that which is associated with the spin and with the orbital motion of the electrons. The effect also demonstrated the close relation between the notions of angular momentum in classical and in quantum physics.
In condensed matter physics, magnetic anisotropy describes how an object's magnetic properties can be different depending on direction. In the simplest case, there is no preferential direction for an object's magnetic moment. It will respond to an applied magnetic field in the same way, regardless of which direction the field is applied. This is known as magnetic isotropy. In contrast, magnetically anisotropic materials will be easier or harder to magnetize depending on which way the object is rotated.
In physics, the Landau–Lifshitz–Gilbert equation, named for Lev Landau, Evgeny Lifshitz, and T. L. Gilbert, is a name used for a differential equation describing the precessional motion of magnetization M in a solid. It is a modification by Gilbert of the original equation of Landau and Lifshitz.
Discovered only as recently as 2006 by C.D. Stanciu and F. Hansteen and published in Physical Review Letters, this effect is generally called all-optical magnetization reversal. This magnetization reversal technique refers to a method of reversing magnetization in a magnet simply by circularly polarized light and where the magnetization direction is controlled by the light helicity. In particular, the direction of the angular momentum of the photons would set the magnetization direction without the need of an external magnetic field. In fact, this process could be seen as similar to magnetization reversal by spin injection. The only difference is that now, the angular momentum is supplied by the circularly polarized photons instead of the polarized electrons.
In its most general form, the magnetoelectric effect (ME) denotes any coupling between the magnetic and the electric properties of a material. The first example of such an effect was described by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1888, who found that a dielectric material moving through an electric field would become magnetized. A material where such a coupling is intrinsically present is called a magnetoelectric.
Pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) is an electron paramagnetic resonance technique that involves the alignment of the net magnetization vector of the electron spins in a constant magnetic field. This alignment is perturbed by applying a short oscillating field, usually a microwave pulse. One can then measure the emitted microwave signal which is created by the sample magnetization. Fourier transformation of the microwave signal yields an EPR spectrum in the frequency domain. With a vast variety of pulse sequences it is possible to gain extensive knowledge on structural and dynamical properties of paramagnetic compounds. Pulsed EPR techniques such as electron spin echo envelope modulation (ESEEM) or pulsed electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) can reveal the interactions of the electron spin with its surrounding nuclear spins.
In quantum mechanics, orbital magnetization, Morb, refers to the magnetization induced by orbital motion of charged particles, usually electrons in solids. The term "orbital" distinguishes it from the contribution of spin degrees of freedom, Mspin, to the total magnetization. A nonzero orbital magnetization requires broken time-reversal symmetry, which can occur spontaneously in ferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic materials, or can be induced in a non-magnetic material by an applied magnetic field.
Spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR) is a transport phenomenon that is found in some electrical conductors that have at least one surface in direct contact with another magnetic material due to changes in the spin current that are present in metals and semiconductors with a large spin Hall angle. It is most easily detected when the magnetic material is an insulator which eliminates other magnetically sensitive transport effects arising from conduction in the magnetic material.
Cross-polarization (CP), originally published as proton-enhanced nuclear induction spectroscopy is a solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) technique to transfer nuclear magnetization from different types of nuclei via heteronuclear dipolar interactions. The 1H-X cross-polarization dramatically improves the sensitivity of ssNMR experiments of most experiments involving spin-1/2 nuclei, capitalizing on the higher 1H polarisation, and shorter T1(1H) relaxation times. It was developed by Michael Gibby, Alexander Pines and Professor John S. Waugh at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
