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Quantum quirk yields giant magnetic effect, where none should exist
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210226140453.htm
The discovery by researchers from Rice University, Austria's Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), Switzerland's Paul Scherrer Institute and Canada's McMaster University is detailed in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Of interest are both the origins of the effect, which is typically associated with magnetism, and its gigantic magnitude -- more than 1,000 times larger than one might observe in simple semiconductors.
Rice study co-author Qimiao Si, a theoretical physicist who has investigated quantum materials for nearly three decades, said, "It's really topology at work," referring to the patterns of quantum entanglement that give rise the unorthodox state.