Speaker
Description
The recent surge of interest in chiral phonons – vibrational modes carrying angular momentum – brings renewed attention to the interplay between magnetism and atomic or molecular motion. While current studies focus mostly on bulk materials, molecular systems provide an ideal, well-controlled platform for the exploration of similar phenomena on the microscopic scale. In this work, we present a comprehensive and rigorous theoretical study of vibrational magnetism in molecules, originating from the coupling between nuclear motion and magnetic moments.
Phenomena related to rotational and vibrational magnetism in molecules were already explored over half a century ago, particularly during the early development of microwave spectroscopy. However, a consistent and quantitative theoretical framework describing spin–vibration interactions has remained incomplete. By combining modern ab initio computational techniques with analytical modeling to extract the relevant coupling parameters, we revisit this longstanding problem and predict the emergence of localized magnetic fields induced by molecular vibrations.
While our current analysis focuses on interactions involving nuclear spins, the framework we develop can be naturally extended to include electron spins. This opens up new directions for understanding and exploring the rapidly developing field of chiral phononics.