Magnetism fosters unusual electronic order in quantum material

(Nanowerk News) Physicists were surprised by the 2022 discovery that electrons in magnetic iron-germanium crystals could spontaneously and collectively organize their charges into a pattern featuring a standing wave. Magnetism also arises from the collective self-organization of electron spins into ordered patterns, and those patterns rarely coexist with the patterns that produce the standing wave of electrons physicists call a charge density wave. In a study published in Nature Physics (“Magnetism and charge density wave order in kagome FeGe”), Rice University…