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Scientists trap light inside a magnet

Light trapped inside a magnetic crystal can strongly enhance its magneto-optical interactions. Credit: Rezlind Bushati.

A groundbreaking study led by Vinod M. Menon and his esteemed team at the City College of New York has unveiled the remarkable potential of trapping light within magnetic materials to significantly enhance their inherent properties. The development of magnets with robust optical responses holds great significance for the advancement of magnetic lasers, magneto-optical memory devices, and ground-breaking quantum transduction applications.

In their groundbreaking article published in Nature, Menon and his team provide crucial insights into the properties of a layered magnet that hosts highly bound excitons – quasiparticles renowned for their exceptionally strong optical interactions. Remarkably, this material possesses the ability to trap light independently.

The results of their experimental endeavors demonstrate that the optical reactions of this material to magnetic phenomena are exponentially more potent compared to typical magnets. Dr. Florian Dirnberger, the lead author of the study, highlights, “The interaction is genuinely enhanced due to the bouncing of light within the magnet.”

Dr. Menon adds, “Ordinarily, light does not exhibit such strong responsiveness to magnetism. Hence, technological applications that rely on magneto-optic effects typically require sophisticated optical detection mechanisms.”

Jiamin Quan, one of the co-authors of the study, emphasizes the potential benefits of these advancements for ordinary individuals, stating, “In light of these powerful interactions between magnetism and light, we can now anticipate the creation of magnetic lasers and a reevaluation of previous concepts surrounding optically controlled magnetic memory.” Rezlind Bushati, a graduate student in the Menon group, also made significant contributions to the experimental work.

More information: Florian Dirnberger et al, Magneto-optics in a van der Waals magnet tuned by self-hybridized polaritons, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06275-2

Provided by City College of New York

Citation: Scientists trap light inside a magnet (2023, August 16) retrieved 16 August 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-08-scientists-magnet.html

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