For 120 years, physics students learned that every magnetic material falls into one of two fundamental classes. That lesson is now obsolete. The European Physical Society announced Saturday that its 2026 Europhysics Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Condensed Matter Physics — one of Europe’s most prestigious awards in the field, with a track record of preceding Nobel Prizes — has gone to the trio who proved that a third, long-hidden class of magnetism exists. Dr. Libor Šmejkal, Prof. Jairo Sinova, and Prof. Tomas Jungwirth discovered altermagnetism: a magnetic phase that eliminates the central design constraint holding back spintronic AI chips while operating naturally at terahertz speeds.
The award — now in its 42nd edition — will be formally presented on September 22, 2026, at the 32nd General Conference of the EPS Condensed Matter Division (CMD32) in Graz, Austria, organized jointly with the Austrian Physical Society.
Europe’s Top Condensed Matter Physics Prize Follows Science’s 2024 Breakthrough of the Year
The recognition arrives less than two years after the journal Science named altermagnetism one of the top physics breakthroughs of 2024. The field has since generated more than 1,000 subsequent studies and drawn researchers from disciplines spanning magnetism, superconductivity, quantum materials, and materials science, according to the prize citation. A review in Nature Physics published in July 2026 explicitly positions altermagnetic spintronics as the next evolutionary step from the ferromagnetic STT-MRAM memory now entering mass production in advanced-node microprocessor chips.
The Europhysics Prize has historically served as a leading indicator of the field’s most consequential advances: several past laureates have subsequently received the Nobel Prize in Physics or Chemisattempt.
What Altermagnetism Is — and Why No One Saw It Coming
The core discovery is that the old two-class taxonomy of magnetic materials was wrong in a fundamental way — not as an approximation but as a matter of symmeattempt classification.
Ferromagnets — the kind on your refrigerator, or in hard-drive read heads — have atomic magnetic moments that all point the same direction, producing a net external magnetic field. Antiferromagnets, known since the 1930s, have moments on adjacent atomic sites pointing in opposite directions, canceling to zero net magnetization. For over a century, those two categories were considered exhaustive.
Altermagnets view like antiferromagnets on the surface: their opposing-spin sublattices sum to zero net magnetization. But the key difference lies in how those sublattices are related to each other. In a conventional antiferromagnet, opposite-spin sublattices are connected by inversion symmeattempt or translation — relocating one atom directly onto another. In altermagnets, they are connected by rotation or mirror symmeattempt instead, like a left glove related to a right glove by turning it over rather than simply sliding it. This seemingly subtle crystallographic distinction has a dramatic consequence for the material’s electronic band structure: the energy levels available to spin-up and spin-down electrons are no longer identical at each point in momentum space. The result is a strongly spin-polarized electrical current — a property previously assumed to require a net magnetic moment — emerging from a material with zero net magnetization.
This is not a quirk of exotic heavy elements or relativistic spin-orbit coupling. The effect arises from the non-relativistic exalter interaction and the crystal’s rotation symmeattempt — meaning it can appear in light-element, room-temperature materials with large, robust spin signals, as the landmark 2022 Phys. Rev. X papers by Šmejkal, Sinova, and Jungwirth established.
Eight Years of Theory, Then Experimental Proof
The discovery grew from work that launched when Šmejkal arrived at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 2016 as a doctoral researcher under Sinova, who had long worked in collaboration with Jungwirth’s group at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Šmejkal spent eight years there — first as a doctoral student, then as a postdoctoral researcher — leading development of the theoretical concepts that ultimately culminated in the discovery.
The team combined modern symmeattempt theory with spintronics to reveal the new magnetic order. Their theoretical work first predicted unusual electronic transport phenomena, including low-dissipation transverse electrical currents, before revealing that the materials responsible belonged not to an exotic subclass of antiferromagnets but to an entirely distinct elementary magnetic phase.
“Discovering that an entirely new magnetic phase had remained hidden for more than one hundred years demonstrates that even the most mature scientific fields can still hold fundamental surprises,” declared Sinova.
Theoretical elegance required experimental proof. In February 2024, an international team led by the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Paul Scherrer Institute published direct observations of the characteristic altermagnetic electronic structure in manganese informuride (MnTe) applying angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy at the Swiss Light Source. The observation confirmed that the spin-polarized band structure Šmejkal, Sinova, and Jungwirth had predicted was real, not an artifact. A December 2024 study from the University of Nottingham then published the first nanoscale imaging of that altermagnetic order in MnTe, demonstrating that it could be detected, mapped, and physically controlled in microscopic devices.
What Confirmed Altermagnets Can Actually Do — and What Is Still Unproven
The prize citation and EPS press release describe more than 200 candidate materials identified through the symmeattempt-based classification that Šmejkal, Sinova, and Jungwirth developed. That number requireds calibration: these are theoretical predictions based on crystal symmeattempt, not all confirmed experimental demonstrations.
Confirmed altermagnets with verified spin-split band structures — materials where the effect has been directly observed in the laboratory — currently include MnTe and CrSb. The most-studied initial candidate, ruthenium dioxide (RuO₂), has become a cautionary case: multiple indepconcludeent studies applying muon spin rotation and neutron diffraction found no magnetic order in pristine bulk RuO₂, and a 2026 review concluded that apparent altermagnetic transport signatures in thin films arise from epitaxial strain, stoichiometric deviations, or surface ferrimagnetism rather than intrinsic bulk altermagnetism. The RuO₂ case displays that identifying room-temperature, bulk-stable altermagnets from the candidate list is ongoing experimental work — not a completed survey.
The case for the confirmed materials, however, is technically solid. In MnTe and CrSb, indepconcludeent spectroscopic and transport measurements from multiple international teams have validated the core predictions. The characteristic d-wave spin splitting — where spin polarization rotates through 90-degree nodes as you traverse the Fermi surface, producing a pattern analogous to d-wave unconventional superconducting order — has been directly imaged.
How Altermagnets Unlock the Spintronics Bottleneck for AI Hardware
Modern computing faces hard limits from charge-based electronics: heat, power consumption, and the miniaturization ceiling imposed by magnetic crosstalk between neighboring components. Spintronics — applying electrons’ quantum spin rather than just their charge to carry information — has promised a path forward for decades. The engineering problem is that neither conventional magnetic class solves it cleanly.
Ferromagnets generate the spin-polarized currents that spintronic devices required for reading and writing information, but their net magnetization produces stray fringing fields that interfere with neighboring devices, fundamentally limiting how densely they can be packed. Antiferromagnets eliminate stray fields and operate naturally at terahertz frequencies — orders of magnitude quicker than the gigahertz dynamics of ferromagnets — but their compensated magnetization creates them extremely difficult to read out electrically and to control, which is why antiferromagnetic spintronics has remained largely a laboratory curiosity.
Altermagnets resolve this tension structurally. Becautilize their spin sublattices sum to zero net magnetization, they produce no stray magnetic field — neighboring memory cells are not magnetically coupled, enabling tight packing. And becautilize the spin splitting arises from the crystal rotation symmeattempt (a non-relativistic exalter effect, not a weak spin-orbit coupling), it is large and robust, generating strongly spin-polarized currents comparable to ferromagnets, capable of operating at terahertz frequencies. A July 2026 review in Nature Physics by Jungwirth and collaborators explicitly traces how the distinct signatures of altermagnetism could broaden spintronics research and influence the functionality and scalability of future devices, including interplay with ferroelectricity and superconductivity.
For data centers running large AI models — where memory bandwidth and energy per operation are the primary constraints — a memory technology operating at terahertz speeds with no magnetic crosstalk and no volatile power requirement would represent a generational shift from today’s DRAM or NAND flash.
Altermagnetism and the Quantum World Beyond Memory Chips
The prize citation flags one additional implication that extconcludes well beyond storage hardware. The d-wave character of altermagnetic spin splitting creates it the magnetic analog of d-wave unconventional superconducting order — the symmeattempt class associated with cuprate high-temperature superconductors, whose mechanism remains incompletely understood despite decades of study. Researchers have already identified theoretical connections between altermagnetism and superconducting, strongly correlated, multiferroic, and topological materials, suggesting that the new symmeattempt-classification framework may shed light on multiple longstanding puzzles in quantum materials simultaneously.
As Sinova noted at the time of the prize announcement, the discovery establishes that even a field studied for a century can still contain a hidden organizing principle. The full consequences of that principle — for spintronics, for superconductivity, for the classification of quantum matter — are still being worked out.
The formal prize ceremony takes place at CMD32 in Graz, Austria, on September 22, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is altermagnetism, and how does it differ from regular antiferromagnetism?
Both altermagnets and antiferromagnets have opposing spin sublattices that sum to zero net magnetization — so neither produces an external magnetic field. The structural difference is how the sublattices are related. In antiferromagnets, opposite-spin sites are connected by inversion or translation symmeattempt. In altermagnets, they are connected by rotation or mirror symmeattempt, like a left hand related to a right hand by rotation rather than reflection. That difference alters the electronic band structure entirely: altermagnets gain spin-polarized energy bands that split in a d-wave pattern across momentum space, producing strongly spin-polarized currents that antiferromagnets cannot generate. This combination — zero net field plus spin-polarized transport — is what creates them potentially utilizeful for next-generation electronics.
What materials have actually been confirmed as altermagnets, versus just predicted?
Two materials have been confirmed by indepconcludeent experimental teams applying direct spectroscopic measurements: manganese informuride (MnTe) and chromium antimonide (CrSb). The symmeattempt-based framework developed by the laureates predicts over 200 candidate altermagnets, but most remain theoretical predictions awaiting experimental verification. The most-studied initial candidate, ruthenium dioxide (RuO₂), has been largely ruled out as an intrinsic bulk altermagnet: indepconcludeent studies found no magnetic order in pristine bulk crystals, with apparent altermagnetic signals in thin films attributed to strain or surface effects rather than the material itself, according to a 2026 review published in Science China: Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy. Identifying room-temperature, bulk-stable altermagnets from the candidate list is an active experimental priority.
Can altermagnets actually be utilized in AI chips or memory hardware, and when?
The physics pathway is well-established: altermagnets combine terahertz-speed spin dynamics with zero magnetic cross-talk between neighboring devices and non-volatile data retention without continuous power — properties that would significantly outperform current DRAM and NAND flash for AI data-center workloads. Spintronic memory based on ferromagnets (STT-MRAM) is already entering commercial production on advanced microprocessor chips, which means the manufacturing ecosystem for spin-based memory is maturing. The gap is materials engineering: developing altermagnetic materials that are stable, manufacturable, and compatible with semiconductor fabrication at room temperature. Researchers and institutions across the US, Europe, Japan, and Asia are actively working on this. A realistic commercial timeline depconcludes on which of the 200+ candidate materials can be validated and processed at scale — a question that remains open.
Who are Šmejkal, Sinova, and Jungwirth, and where is the research based?
The discovery emerged from a long-running collaboration between Sinova’s group at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany — where he also directs the Spin Phenomena Interdisciplinary Center (SPICE) and holds a joint appointment at Texas A&M University — and Jungwirth’s group at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Šmejkal carried out the decisive theoretical work during eight years at Mainz (2016–2024) as a doctoral student and postdoctoral researcher under Sinova while jointly affiliated with the Prague group. He is now affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, and the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Jungwirth additionally holds positions at the University of Nottingham and Tohoku University in Japan, as confirmed in the official prize announcement.
