Turning back time by controlling magnetic interactions

In many materials, macroscopic magnetic properties emerge when microscopically small magnets align in a fixed pattern throughout the whole solid. In a publication in Nature Communications, Johan Mentink, Karsten Balzer and Martin Eckstein from the University of Hamburg at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) have predicted that the interactions causing this alignment can be changed almost instantaneously an...