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Updated: Jul 12, 2026

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses
Published on: June 7, 2018
Observation of Altermagnetic Order Switching in Bulk MnTe by Polarized Neutron Diffraction
Zheyuan Liu1, Shinichiro Asai1, Shingo Takahashi1
1the University of Tokyo, Institute for Solid State Physics, Kashiwa 277-8581, Japan.
None:
Altermagnetic order, characterized by the Néel vector, breaks time-reversal symmetry (TRS) even in the nonrelativistic limit. Although spin-polarized and anomalous transport phenomena emerge with this order, they are mutually compensated by TRS-connected antiphase domains with opposite Néel vectors. Here we employ polarized neutron diffraction to directly probe the altermagnetic order in MnTe. Pronounced nuclear-magnetic interference terms were observed, providing direct evidence of a net Néel vector in the bulk crystal. Moreover, a weak ferromagnetic moment (WFM), originating from relativistic spin-orbit coupling, was found to be coupled with the altermagnetic order. Both the altermagnetic order and the WFM can be switched by milli-Tesla-scale magnetic field cooling.
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