Gang Cao

At 78 K, a crystal of Mn₃Si₂Te₆ turns into an inductor that needs neither copper wire nor a superconductor. The electrons inside it spontaneously organize into closed vortices with a definite sense of rotation: chiral orbital currents.

A quantum chip is like a musical instrument that goes out of tune at the slightest touch. In devices made from strained germanium, a material where atoms are slightly stretched for better conductivity, the main source of off-key notes is defects at the interface between the semiconductor and the insulating layer.

The crystal Ba4Ru3O10 was long considered a simple antiferromagnet: when cooled to 100 K, the spins of ruthenium atoms align in opposite directions, like rows of arrows pointing at each other. But new measurements show that at the same temperature, something more happens — a hidden charge density wave is born inside the material.

Drop a stone into a pond, and ripples spread across the water. Magnets have waves too — only instead of water molecules, it's the directions of atomic magnetic arrows that oscillate. These waves are called magnons, and their behavior reveals a lot about the invisible forces between atoms.