More than a century after physicists settled on two fundamental types of collinear magnets—ferromagnets and antiferromagnets—researchers have shown there is a third. Altermagnets cancel out their magnetic moments like antiferromagnets, yet their electrons can behave in ways previously associated with ferromagnets. The 2026 Europhysics Prize from the European Physical Society's Condensed Matter Division has been awarded to Jairo Sinova, Libor Šmejkal, and Tomas Jungwirth for establishing this new magnetic class.
The work grew out of theoretical studies of unusual electrical transport and symmetry in magnetic materials. Šmejkal, who spent years at Mainz as a doctoral and postdoctoral researcher, led much of the framework. After the team published a symmetry classification in 2022, experimental groups used angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and transport measurements to confirm altermagnetic behavior in several materials.
Because altermagnets combine spin-polarized currents with fast magnetic dynamics, they could become useful in spintronic devices, memory, and future computing. The discovery also connects to topological phenomena, unconventional superconductivity, and strongly correlated quantum materials. Research on altermagnetism has since become one of the most active areas in condensed matter physics, with laboratories across Europe, North America, and Asia pursuing it.