As part of the seminar series organized by the Center for Solid State Physics and New Materials at the Institute of Physics Belgrade, Dr. Srđan Stavrić (Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences) gave a lecture titled “Why All That Fuss About Altermagnets?” on Monday, 20 October 2025.
During the lecture, Dr. Stavrić introduced the emerging concept of altermagnets—a new class of magnetic materials that bridge the properties of antiferromagnets and ferromagnets—and discussed their symmetry-driven characteristics and potential applications in spintronics.
ABSTRACT
Altermagnets are an emerging class of magnetic materials characterized by a collinear compensated arrangement of magnetic moments and a momentum-dependent spin splitting in the band structure. This peculiar combination, arising from specific crystal symmetries, merges the most desirable traits of antiferromagnets – such as ultrafast dynamics without stray fields – with the strong time-reversal-symmetry-breaking responses characteristic for ferromagnets. Found in a diverse range of materials from metals to insulators, altermagnets offer a versatile new platform for next-generation spintronics, paving the way for high-density magnetic memory and terahertz nano-oscillators.
This talk will explore the fundamental principles and significant potential of this exciting new class of materials. We will begin by establishing a new taxonomy of collinear magnets, introducing the distinct realms of ferromagnets, antiferromagnets, and altermagnets, and extending the concept to non-collinear p-wave magnets. A special focus will be on recent observation of p-wave magnetism in a spin-spiral type-II multiferroic NiI₂. We will explore how the symmetry-protected coupling between chirality and polar order enables electrical control of a primarily non-relativistic spin polarization in this material.
Finally, we will examine the role of spin-orbit coupling in altermagnets and show what implications it may have on electronic and magnetic properties. In particular, we will focus on two-dimensional altermagnets, where this relativistic interaction cannot be neglected as it is the source of the magnetic anisotropy which is crucial for stabilizing long-range magnetic order at finite temperatures.
