Nematic materials are made of elongated molecules that align in a preferred direction, but, like in a fluid, are spaced out irregularly. The best-known nematic materials are liquid crystals, which are used in liquid crystal display (LCD) screens. However, nematic order has been identified in a wide range of systems, including bacterial suspensions and superconductors.

Now, a team led by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and University of California, Santa Cruz, has discovered a nematic order in a magnetic material, in which the magnetic spins of the material are arranged into coils pointing in the same general direction.

“If we think of these magnetic helices as the objects that are aligning, the magnetism follows expectations for nematic phases,” said Zoey Tumbleson, a graduate student at Berkeley Lab and the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led this work. “These phases were not previously known and it’s very exciting to see this generalized to a wider field of study.”