Research Group:

Chiral magnetism and multiferroics

Research Area:

Beamline:

Overview of Research Group, Goals and Purposes:

Optical activity of materials is a direct consequence of fundamental nature of light as polarized transverse wave. How to control the polarization is crucial for carving out new facets of technologies such as spin-electronics or quantum cryptography, as well as generally used liquid-crystal or optical communication technologies. Optical activity often means natural optical activity arising from a chiral crystal structure, but it is also known that there is magneto-optical activity originating from magnetization of material such as Faraday rotation. Since the two optical activities violate different symmetries, space inversion and time reversal, they have been treated as different branches of research. However, integrated studies of the two phenomena are currently accelerating: novel magneto-optical effects in chiral magnets where space inversion and time reversal symmetries breakings occur, or exotic electromagnetic properties induced by the cross-correlations between dielectricity and magnetism.

Since highly polarized synchrotron radiation is a powerful and direct probe for chirality, it is certain that the role of SPring-8 will become more and more essential in research areas of chiral magnetism and multiferroics. Therefore, we organize this research group in order to promote experimental studies on magnetism with exploiting excellent polarization properties of synchrotron radiation. This research group is managed by researchers conducting studies with SPring-8:

1. Magnetic structure of chiral magnets and multiferroic materials
2. Magnetic and electronic properties of chiral magnets and multiferroic materials
3. Dynamics and other cross-over effects in chiral magnets and multiferroic materials
4. Related measuring techniques

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