Adler Lectureship Award (2022): The Joy of Magnetism

Magnetic materials have been the object of human curiosity for thousands of years and even at a very young age many of us find magnets fascinating toys to play with. At the same time, magnetic materials are central to our modern information-driven society, since ultimately almost all digital data is currently stored magnetically. Thus, understanding how to manipulate magnetism at the nanoscale satisfies both our drive to obtain a better fundamental understanding of the world, as well as providing a sustainable future. Towards this end, magnetic multilayers have harbored a font of surprising complexity that give rise to many new applied opportunities. Here interfacial symmetry breaking, the coupling of spins to their orbital motion, and the strong non-linearities of magnetization dynamics generate an abundance of unexpected phenomena. These range from novel approaches of generating spin currents over different ways how topology influences magnetic systems to complex magnetization dynamics that may emulate the function of the natural brain. In this talk, I will highlight some of the magnetic effects that brought joy to my own scientific work. These include, spintransport in antiferromagnets, blowing of magnetic bubbles, and curveballs with magnons.