***When an ultra-short laser pulse is shot into a magnet for a moment the magnet will lose its magnetic properties. Its spins will turn to waves and after a short while everything will go back to normal. But, sometimes the magnetic poles may shift.***

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It has been some time since scientists noticed something interesting. When an ultra-thin magnet is shot by a laser it will suddenly lose its magnetic properties. A research team from the University Colorado in Boulder decided to figure out how do the magnets recover back to their previous state as that process is incredibly fast – just a fraction of the second.

Ezio Iacocca and his coworkers found that magnets that were shot by a laser pulse do behave as a liquid. Their magnetic elements – their electron spins – create “drops” just as if you shook a bottle with water and oil. The researchers found that thanks to mathematical modeling, computer simulations and experiments performed in the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

The team focused on the short but critical moment that lasts just twenty trillionths of a second after the pulse hits the magnet. Under normal circumstance, the magnets are nicely organized. But when it is hit by the pulse the order turns to chaos.

The researchers performed a series of experiments during with they fired laser pulses into small pieces of a magnetic alloy of gadolinium, iron, and cobalt. The results were then compared with mathematical calculations and computer simulations. And the result is, magnets turn to liquid. Well, it’s not the alloy itself that turns to liquid but the spins of the magnet start behaving like a liquid. They moved and changed just like waves on the ocean.

Iacocca and his coworkers also found that the magnet doesn’t always turn back to exactly the same state. In some case the magnet reversed – the magnetic poles switched. And this is something engineers already use this in hard drives and similar devices to store data. Iacocca’s research could provide increased speed and thus faster computers.

**Sources:**
* https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09577-0
* https://www.colorado.edu/today/2019/04/18/lasers-make-magnets-behave-fluids

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