Research progress and future prospects of altermagnets
Abstract
<p indent="0mm">As a novel magnetic phase, altermagnets exhibit staggered collinear compensated spin alignment in real space and staggered spin-splitting energy bands in reciprocal space, combining the advantages of both ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. These materials possess unique properties, such as the absence of stray fields, high intrinsic frequency, and nontrivial magnetic responses originating from time-reversal symmetry breaking. Furthermore, altermagnets span a wide range of material systems, including metals, semiconductors, insulators, and superconductors, offering profound scientific implications and versatile opportunities for exploration. This review begins by elucidating the fundamental distinctions between altermagnets and conventional ferromagnets or antiferromagnets through symmetry analysis and presenting a catalog of representative altermagnets. It then provides a comprehensive overview of recent experimental advances, with a focus on transport phenomena linked to spin splitting in altermagnets and strategies for their modulation. Lastly, this review outlines promising future research directions, such as the development of high-performance spintronic storage devices based on altermagnets, real-space imaging of spin splitting in altermagnets, the interaction of altermagnets with quasiparticles and the combination of altermagnetism with multiferroicity. These advancements and prospects highlight altermagnets as a transformative research frontier in spintronics, with immense scientific value and vast potential for practical applications.</p>
