Magnetic monopoles in spin ice crystals
Today one of the major goals of physicists is to unify the forces of nature into a Grand Unified Theory that could portray a more elegant and comprehensive representation of the Universe. One step towards this big theory comes from the hunt for and research on magnetic monopoles. A magnetic monopole is an isolated north pole or an isolated south pole. This concept defies our conventional expectations that separate magnetic monopoles cannot exist. Even if the existence of magnetic monopoles as elementary particles remains a fundamental open question, condensed-matter physicists have managed to reproduce artificial versions of these exotic particles in rare-earth oxide crystals called "spin ices". Dr Ludovic Jaubert, group leader in the Professor Nic Shannon's Theory of Quantum Matter Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) together with Prof Roderich Moessner from the Max Planck Institute in Dresden gave a theoretical explanation for...