A particular kind of elementary particle, the Weyl fermions, were first discovered a few years ago. Their specialty: they move through a material in a well ordered manner that practically never lets them collide with each other and is thus very energy efficient. This opens up intriguing possibilities for the electronics of the future. Up to now, Weyl fermions had only been found in certain non-magnetic materials. Now however, for the very first time, scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have experimentally proved their existence in another type of material: a paramagnet with intrinsic slow magnetic fluctuations. This finding also shows that it is possible to manipulate the Weyl fermions with small magnetic fields, potentially enabling their use in spintronics, a promising development in electronics for novel computer technology. The researchers published their findings in the scientific journal Science Advances.
* This article was originally published here
