{"id":232665,"date":"2026-03-06T01:28:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T07:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/neutrons-reveal-magnetic-signatures-of-chiral-phonons"},"modified":"2026-03-06T01:28:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T07:28:27","slug":"neutrons-reveal-magnetic-signatures-of-chiral-phonons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/neutrons-reveal-magnetic-signatures-of-chiral-phonons","title":{"rendered":"Neutrons reveal magnetic signatures of chiral phonons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/neutrons-reveal-magnetic-signatures-of-chiral-phonons2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Physicists in China have uncovered new evidence that chiral phonons and magnons can interact strongly inside magnetic crystals. Using neutron spectroscopy, a team led by Song Bao at Nanjing University mapped magnetic signatures linked to chiral phonons in a ferrimagnetic material, revealing a previously elusive relationship between lattice vibrations and magnetic excitations. Reported in <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/pq5m-32wj\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Physical Review Letters<\/i><\/a>, the results could help researchers better understand how heat, sound and spin interact in quantum materials.<\/p>\n<p>Phonons are collective vibrations of atoms in a crystal lattice which carry quantized packets of sound and heat through a solid. As quasiparticles, they behave somewhat like particles moving through the material and can interact with other excitations. In some cases, phonons also exhibit chirality: where some property of a particle differs from its mirror image.<\/p>\n<p>For phonons, chirality arises when ions move in circular motions as the lattice vibrates, which imparts both an angular momentum and a tiny magnetic moment, which rotates in a plane perpendicular to the phonon\u2019s direction of travel. Crucially, however, the phonon\u2019s properties will vary depending on whether this rotation is clockwise or anticlockwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physicists in China have uncovered new evidence that chiral phonons and magnons can interact strongly inside magnetic crystals. Using neutron spectroscopy, a team led by Song Bao at Nanjing University mapped magnetic signatures linked to chiral phonons in a ferrimagnetic material, revealing a previously elusive relationship between lattice vibrations and magnetic excitations. Reported in Physical [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232665","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=232665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}