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Magnetic Storage Using Quantum Vortex Cores
brian0918 writes, "Researchers at the Max Planck Institute have discovered a new, easy way to manipulate the state of tiny magnetic structures, called vortex cores, quickly and without loss. From their press release: 'Up until now, very strong magnetic fields have been necessary to accomplish this, requiring highly complex technology. The new method might open up new possibilities for magnetic data storage. The directions of the small nanoscopic magnetic needles define a digital bit that is extremely stable in the face of frequently unavoidable external factors such as heat or interference from magnetic fields.'" You can read the first paragraph of the paper at Nature; subscribers can read it all.
gyrations of the vortex structure can be reversed by applying short bursts of the sinusoidal excitation field with amplitude of about 1.5 mT
We can turn the really small cones upside down by shooting it with 1.5 mili Tesla magnetic fields. Before we needed 500 times as much energy. I think that covers it.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
The paper cites 10nm radius for the cores, which at optimal packing (ie, one core per 20nm square) yields 3.12500 * 10^14 Bytes / m^2. The latest in perpendicular recording gives an areal density of 277.1 Mb/mm^2, which is just 3.46375 * 10^13 Bytes / m^2, an order of magnitude less! Granted, packing is probably not optimal -- the cores probably need to be spaced by at least a multiple of their diameter. But then again, the cores can probably be shrunk, so at the very least this represents a modest improvement over current storage density. At best, it represents at least an order of magnitude improvement (read: 7.5 TB desktop drives).
:)
PS: Slashdot -- please add support for mathml or latex code inserts