Altermagnetism Discovery Earns 2026 Europhysics Prize
Researchers identify a third form of collinear magnetism combining zero net magnetization with spin-polarized electrical currents.
By Giovanni Sapere
2 min readHuman-Edited, AI-Assisted
Physicists have identified altermagnetism as a third distinct category of collinear magnetism, challenging an understanding that stood for over a century. The breakthrough, which represents a foundational scientific innovation, earned researchers from Germany and the Czech Republic the prestigious 2026 Europhysics Prize. By uniting traits of ferromagnets and antiferromagnets, the finding provides a novel mechanism for spintronic devices and next-generation computing technologies.
Overturning a century-old magnetic paradigm
For more than a century, condensed matter physics categorized collinear magnets into two primary groups: ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. Ferromagnets possess aligned magnetic moments that create a net external magnetization, while conventional antiferromagnets feature cancelling moments that produce zero net magnetization. As reported by ScienceDaily, theoretical and experimental physics have now confirmed altermagnetism as a distinct third phase of magnetic matter, representing a breakthrough innovation in fundamental materials science.
“Discovering that an entirely new magnetic phase had remained hidden for more than one hundred years demonstrates that even the most mature scientific fields can still hold fundamental surprises.”
— Professor Jairo Sinova, Director of the Spin Phenomena Interdisciplinary Center at Mainz University
How altermagnetic materials function
Altermagnets merge physical traits previously thought to be mutually exclusive. Like antiferromagnets, their internal magnetic moments cancel out, resulting in zero net magnetization. At the same time, their electron distribution allows them to produce electrical currents with strongly polarized electron spins, a behavior historically observed only in ferromagnets. According to Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz via ScienceDaily, this unusual behavior stems from a newly identified symmetry class governing electron arrangements within the crystal lattice, enabling rapid magnetic dynamics that could lay the groundwork for future patent filings in ultrafast memory storage.
The Europhysics Prize honorees
The European Physical Society Condensed Matter Division selected three researchers for the 2026 Europhysics Prize in recognition of the breakthrough. The recipients include Professor Jairo Sinova, who heads the Spin Phenomena Interdisciplinary Center at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, alongside Czech Academy of Sciences researcher Professor Tomas Jungwirth and physicist Dr. Libor Šmejkal. The collaboration spanned eight years between 2016 and 2024, during which Šmejkal worked in Mainz developing mathematical models of symmetry before theoretical predictions were validated by external experimental teams, as detailed by ScienceDaily.
From theoretical predictions to experimental validation
The investigation began with research into how electricity moves through magnetic crystal structures, notably predicting the crystal anomalous Hall effect. In 2022, the team published a symmetry classification cataloguing hundreds of materials capable of exhibiting altermagnetism. Independent researchers subsequently confirmed these properties using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and electrical transport measurements, as reported by ScienceDaily. Beyond electronic components, the discovered symmetry connects to topological phenomena, quantum materials, and unconventional superconductivity, opening vast new possibilities for scientific invention.
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