Speaker
Description
Ferromagnets have long been the foundation of spintronics applications. However, materials with compensated magnetic order, such as antiferromagnets, offer distinct advantages, including faster dynamics and a wider range of available materials. This has spurred significant research into antiferromagnetic spintronics, leading to many exciting discoveries [1]. Despite these advancements, antiferromagnets are often not considered robust sources of coherent spin currents. Recently, a new class of compensated magnets, altermagnets, has been identified, combining key advantages of both ferromagnets and antiferromagnets and offering promising potential for spintronics applications [2,3].
In this talk, I will briefly discuss the key experiments of antiferromagnetic spintronics and after that I will introduce the concept of altermagnetism and present several materials that can host altermagnetic order and that we have studied experimentally [4–6]. I will discuss our studies of electronic spin transport in these systems, including the observation of the anomalous Hall effect in a single layer of an altermagnetic material and its thermoelectric counterpart, the anomalous Nernst effect [7]. Next, I will focus on heterostructures containing altermagnets and show that they can behave similarly to ferromagnets in generating robust spin currents [7]. Finally, I will discuss the implications of altermagnetism for magnon-mediated spin currents [8].
References:
[1] T. Jungwirth et al., Nature Nanotechnology 11, 231–241 (2016)
[2] L. Šmejkal et al., Physical Review X 12, 040501 (2022)
[3] C. Song, HR et al., Nature Reviews Materials, 1–13 (2025)
[4] R. D. Gonzalez Betancourt, HR et al., Physical Review Letters 130, 036702 (2023)
[5] H. Reichlová et al., Nature Communications 15, 4961 (2024)
[6] A. Badura, HR et al., Nature Communications 16, 7111 (2025)
[7] J. Mencos, HR et al., arXiv:2512.17427
[8] M. Leiviskä, HR et al., Physical Review Materials 9, 084403 (2025)