Signals ride on waves of one kind or another: light, sound, radio. But new carriers are needed to relay information in next-generation devices. Disturbances or waves in magnetic materials called magnons could be an efficient option—if scientists can tame them.

A team led by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U. of I.) has developed a method to generate spontaneous magnons in a material called yttrium iron garnet (YIG) that can be tuned to an external signal.

The results, reported in Nature Communications, establish a pathway toward controllable magnons that are relevant for next-generation microelectronics, wireless communication and quantum information processing.