{"id":232444,"date":"2026-03-03T01:27:54","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T07:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/neutrons-illuminate-the-magnetic-dance-of-chiral-phonons"},"modified":"2026-03-03T01:27:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T07:27:54","slug":"neutrons-illuminate-the-magnetic-dance-of-chiral-phonons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/neutrons-illuminate-the-magnetic-dance-of-chiral-phonons","title":{"rendered":"Neutrons Illuminate the Magnetic Dance of Chiral Phonons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/neutrons-illuminate-the-magnetic-dance-of-chiral-phonons2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Neutron scattering has provided a new and broader view of the twirling collective atomic vibrations in a magnetic crystal.<\/p>\n<p>Phonons\u2014quantized conveyors of sound and heat in solids\u2014are usually visualized as collective vibrations in which atoms simply bounce back and forth, almost as if they were weights on springs. However, atoms can sometimes form \u201cchiral phonons\u201d that twirl and swivel clockwise or counterclockwise, in a way that resembles a coordinated dance [1]. When these circular, chiral motions entrain ionic charge, they generate a magnetic moment, which suggests that there might be a way to control sound and heat using magnetic fields. Until recently, this magnetic dance was primarily observed using optical techniques, granting access to only one corner of the \u201cstage\u201d\u2014the point in the phonon\u2019s momentum space where the momentum is nearly zero. Song Bao of Nanjing University in China and his collaborators have now broadened the view of momentum space by using inelastic neutron spectroscopy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neutron scattering has provided a new and broader view of the twirling collective atomic vibrations in a magnetic crystal. Phonons\u2014quantized conveyors of sound and heat in solids\u2014are usually visualized as collective vibrations in which atoms simply bounce back and forth, almost as if they were weights on springs. However, atoms can sometimes form \u201cchiral phonons\u201d [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}