Trapping Light Inside a Metamaterial Makes It 10x Magnetic

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This could open doors to technologies we thought were impossible.

Modern life is made possible by electromagnetism. Any piece of technology you use today uses some electromagnetic property discovered by physics over the course of centuries. Finding new ways to manipulate light—which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum—and magnetism will enable the creation of technologies (especially in the quantum realm) that we can’t yet imagine.

To explore new ways to control this fundamental force of nature, scientists from the City College of New York (CCNY) trapped light inside a magnetic metamaterial and made the material itself 10 times more magnetic in the process. The results of the study were published this week in the journal Nature.

The material used was a semiconductor layered with chromium, sulfur, and bromine, and is in a class known as magnetic van der Waals materials (named after Dutch theoretical physicist Johannes Diderik van der Waals). These materials contain attributes not commonly found in naturally occurring materials, and scientists are only beginning to understand their possible applications.

Crucially, this van der Waals material has the ability to create quasiparticles known as excitons, which interact with both light and other particles. It’s these optical interactions that trap light and makes the material so magnetic.

“Since the light bounces back and forth inside the magnet, interactions are genuinely enhanced,” CCNY’s Florian Dirnberger, the lead-author of the study, said in a press statement. “To give an example, when we apply an external magnetic field the near-infrared reflection of light is altered so much, the material basically changes its color. That's a pretty strong magneto-optic response.”

Such a strong interaction between light and magnetism isn’t common, which is why the researchers say that many magneto-optical technologies require sensitive light detection. But this new material bridges the gap between the two, and could open doors to technologies previously believed impossible.

“Technological applications of magnetic materials today are mostly related to magneto-electric phenomena,” study co-author Jiamin Quan said in a statement. “Given such strong interactions between magnetism and light, we can now hope to one day create magnetic lasers and may reconsider old concepts of optically controlled magnetic memory."

Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.

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