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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.
For the non engineers like me... what does this mean in practical usage?
Does it allow smaller particles to store a 0/1 charge, meaning much higher densities for hard drives? Is it cheaper to manufacture? More durable?
Being a notebook user, I'd love to see densities go way up so I can pack a lot more around with me.
Finally, we're moving towards the star-trek age of technology. "Captain, the SAN is down" doesn't sound anywhere near as impressive as "Captain, the Quantum Vortex Core has crashed!"
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
Magnetic Storage Using Magic
There now everyone can understand.
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand
Quantum . . . Vortex . . . Cores
I mean, dang, that name rocks!
I can only hope that drives using this technology have Sub-Ether interfaces and processor boards hosting neural nets harvested from the brains of silicon life forms from Mercury.
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.
I hear that all they had to do was reverse the tachyon flow through the heisenberg compensators.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
You can read the first paragraph of the paper at Nature
Nah. You had me at "quantum vortex cores."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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?
This article was accepted just because it lets kdawson put "Quantum Vortex Cores" on the front page.
If you want to tip over a boat, start rocking back and forth, adding energy with each back and forth motion. I know what keeps the boat in the up or down state; what keeps the votex from from staying somewhere inbetween? Do you have to un-rock then engergy from it too?
science is a religion
that this either (or all) requires a tank of liquid helium, a roomful of sophisticated atomic scanning microscopes, or a highly radioactive source???
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I'm totally down with it!
Get Perpendicular!
--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
I knew this silicon thing was such a fad!
Now, the cool thing about magnetic core memory is that it saves its state, just like Flash. When the Computer History Museam restored a PDP-1, they were able to inspect the old contents of its RAM.
No, I will not work for your startup
So they finally did it. Quantum Buzzwords.
May God help us all.
Rock the boat!
Don't rock the boat, baby...
Rock the boat!
Don't tip the boat over...
Rock the boat!
Don't rock the boat, baby...
Rock the boooooaaaat!
The continuous downscaling in microfabrication technology has enabled the creation of magnetic microstructures and nanostructures with defined sizes and shapes. These structures are currently not only implemented in applications such as data storage and non-volatile magnetic random access memory (MRAM), but also form an interesting playground for the fundamental studies of magnetism on a microscopic level.
In thin film structures, in which the magnetostatic interactions usually force the magnetization to lie parallel to the film plane, typical magnetic configurations occur with domain structures that close the magnetic flux. Square patterns have in this case a typical Landau structure with four triangular domains separated by 90 domain walls. The magnetic vortex is located at the centre of this domain structure, where the four domains meet one another. The curling magnetization cannot stay in the plane at the very centre of the vortex structure because the short-range exchange interaction favours a parallel alignment of neighbouring magnetic moments. The magnetization turns perpendicular to the plane in an area with a radius of about 10 nm, in this way forming the vortex core7. The direction of the out-of-plane component of the magnetization is defined as the polarization of the vortex core (up or down) and gives, together with the sense of the in-plane flux closure (clockwise or anticlockwise), the ground-state configuration as illustrated in Fig. 1a-c. A magnetic vortex can store two bits of information13: the sense of the in-plane flux closure can be used as an information carrier (Fig. 1a, b)14, 15, and the out-of-plane polarization of the magnetic vortex core can also be regarded as '0' or '1' of a bit element (Fig. 1a, c). However, to switch the vortex core polarization, magnetic fields of the order of 0.5 T (refs 16, 17) are needed.
Figure 1: Three-dimensional and two-dimensional representation of vortex and antivortex structures.
Figure 1 : Three-dimensional and two-dimensional representation of vortex and antivortex structures. Unfortunately we are unable to provide accessible alternative text for this. If you require assistance to access this image, or to obtain a text description, please contact npg@nature.com
Vortex (a, b and c) and antivortex (d) structures are illustrated. In both cases the magnetization turns out of the plane at the centre of the structure--either up (a, b, d) or down (c)--corresponding to the vortex core polarization p. In addition, vortex structures are characterized by an in-plane flux closure, which can be clockwise (b) or anticlockwise (a, c). A three-dimensional representation is on the left of each panel; a two-dimensional scheme is on the right. The arrows in the two-dimensional schemes represent the in-plane magnetization components; while the coloured dots represent the out-of-plane component (blue, up; red, down).
High resolution image and legend (298K)
Here we report on experimental studies towards an easy and reproducible switching of the vortex core polarization by low-field excitations. The dynamics in micrometre-sized and square ferromagnetic Permalloy elements with a Landau magnetic ground state were investigated. The structures were excited with an in-plane sinusoidal magnetic field resulting in a gyrotropic movement of the vortex core around the equilibrium position. As already verified in magneto-optical measurements, this in-plane gyrotropic mode is the lowest excitation mode in elements exhibiting a vortex structure (in the frequency range 100 MHz to 1 GHz (refs 18, 19)). A general theory on the dynamics of magnetic domain structures has been introduced previously8. The sense of gyration of a vortex structure is given by the gyrocoupling vector G = -2piqpUnfortunately we are unable to provide accessible alternative text for this. If you require assistance to access this image, or to obtain a text description, please contact npg@nature.com, where q is the topological vorticity, p the vortex core polarization, and Unfortunately
If 10% of the hype revolving around storage in the last 5 years materialized, I'd be storing a terrabyte on a sheet of paper spit out by a magical unicorn's ass by now.
Ya, the big breakthrough appears to be that hitting the core with a very fast perpendicular field flips the needle about 300 times easier than hitting it with a very slow parallel field.
Guess these little "needles" are much easier to spin than to force through the substrate... Of course, I'm not really sure I understand how the whole "anti-vortex" explanation fits with the notion of spinning the assembly. That could be down to fitting the explanation into existing models in a strange way, or it could just be I don't understand it. (Knowing a couple physicists, and looking at the graphics, I'm guessing the original models might not account for perpendicular fields...)
So scientists have been trying to detect it for 36 years, and only were able to do so 4 years ago? Something tells me that we won't be finding this in use for data storage anytime soon.
Anyone know how they can detect these vortex cores? It's great that they've found a "relatively" inexpensive way to reverse the core, but if you still need a magnetic force atomic microscope to "read" the thing, I don't see much practical use to it.
AccountKiller
Cutting edge quantum physics in the late 80's. In your hard drives since the late 90's.
> If 10% of the hype revolving around storage in the last 5 years materialized, I'd be storing a terrabyte on a sheet of paper spit > out by a magical unicorn's ass by now.
How'd you get ahold of my grant proposal?
This will severly damage your pron collection because it will flip the picture around, so instead of seeing a nice full-frontal, you'll only see a butt & back.
All your music will run backwards and, if the Christian groups are right, will just turn into a whole lot of satanic chanting.
One place it will help though is changing your overdraft into a positive bank balance.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The taxpayers of Germany and the US paid for this research. When Nature decides to let them read the article they paid for, I'll start respecting Nature's copyright.
instant on?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on