Magnonics

The magnonics deals with magnetic phenomena in crystals and represents a relatively new branch of solid state physics . In the forefront of research there are so-called spin waves (in quantum mechanics magnon ), which wavy propagate in solids to a corresponding deflection of the spin axes parallel aligned electrons. Since the electrons do not migrate through the solid and therefore do not hit anywhere, the spin waves propagate essentially without any loss of energy. Magnonic components would therefore require less energy than electronic chips and consequently hardly generate any heat. In addition, fewer switching elements are required for the fundamental arithmetic operations than for electronics . Magnonic components also do not require any material contact with the outside world, which is a particular technical challenge when it comes to contacting thousands upon thousands of microscopic wires in modern chips. Finally, the clock frequency , which has been around three gigahertz for semiconductor processors for years, can be increased by an estimated factor of a thousand with magnonic processors. Due to these advantages, magnonics, which are still in the state of basic research, could in the future enable computers to be significantly more efficient than is possible with the help of microelectronics.

Web links

• A new super brain for future supercomputers on welt.de
• Magnons for the computer of the day after tomorrow? Burkard Hillebrands, Technical University of Kaiserslautern