First Clues to Magnetic Monopoles Exposed by Diamonds And Rust

Amazing stuff! This could be huge!

"The search for the magnetic monopole – a particle with one magnetic pole, not two – is one of the most exciting and potentially transformational quests in physics, and scientists just made a major new discovery in their monopole hunt.

An international team of researchers ... have observed monopole-like behavior in the patterns of magnetic fields as they pass through hematite, a material similar to rust. ...

It's hard to overstate how important to physics the discovery of a magnetic monopole would be. For a start, it would help us to develop a unified, symmetrical theory of everything that exists around us. ..."

"... “We’ve shown how diamond quantum magnetometry could be used to unravel the mysterious behaviour of magnetism in two-dimensional quantum materials, which could open up new fields of study in this area,” ..."

First Clues to 'Impossible' Magnetic Monopoles Exposed by Diamonds And Rust : ScienceAlert: The search for the magnetic monopole – a particle with one magnetic pole, not two – is one of the most exciting and potentially transformational quests in physics, and scientists just made a major new discovery in their monopole hunt.

From the abstract:

"Whirling topological textures play a key role in exotic phases of magnetic materials and are promising for logic and memory applications. In antiferromagnets, these textures exhibit enhanced stability and faster dynamics with respect to their ferromagnetic counterparts, but they are also difficult to study due to their vanishing net magnetic moment. One technique that meets the demand of highly sensitive vectorial magnetic field sensing with negligible backaction is diamond quantum magnetometry. Here we show that an archetypal antiferromagnet—haematite—hosts a rich tapestry of monopolar, dipolar and quadrupolar emergent magnetic charge distributions. The direct read-out of the previously inaccessible vorticity of an antiferromagnetic spin texture provides the crucial connection to its magnetic charge through a duality relation. Our work defines a paradigmatic class of magnetic systems to explore two-dimensional monopolar physics, and highlights the transformative role that diamond quantum magnetometry could play in exploring emergent phenomena in quantum materials."

Diamonds and rust help unveil ‘impossible’ quasi-particles (Cambridge University)

Revealing emergent magnetic charge in an antiferromagnet with diamond quantum magnetometry (open access)

Fig. 1: Signatures of emergent magnetic fields in α-Fe2O3.