Researchers have discovered a magnetic equivalent to electricity: single magnetic charges that can behave and interact like electrical ones.
The work is the first to make use of the magnetic monopoles that exist in special crystals known as spin ice.
Writing in Nature journal, a team showed that monopoles gather to form a "magnetic current" like electricity.
The phenomenon, dubbed "magnetricity", could be used in magnetic storage or in computing.
Magnetic monopoles were first predicted to exist over a century ago, as a perfect analogue to electric charges.
Although there are protons and electrons with net positive and negative electric charges, there were no particles in existence which carry magnetic charges. Rather, every magnet has a "north" and "south" pole.
Current event
In September this year, two research groups independently reported the existence of monopoles - "particles" which carry an overall magnetic charge. But they exist only in the spin ice crystals.
These crystals are made up of pyramids of charged atoms, or ions, arranged in such a way that when cooled to exceptionally low temperatures, the materials show tiny, discrete packets of magnetic charge.
The loops of a magnetic field can be seen in the arrangement of iron filings
Now one of those teams has gone on to show that these "quasi-particles" of magnetic charge can move together, forming a magnetic current just like the electric current formed by moving electrons.
They did so by using sub-atomic particles called muons, created at the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) ISIS neutron and muon source near Oxford.
The muons decay millionths of a second after their production into other sub-atomic particles. But the direction in which these resulting particles fly off is an indicator of the magnetic field in a tiny region around the muons.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8307804.stm
