During the week 17-24 February 2024, Dr. Fabio Miletto Granozio (FMG), Director of the CNR-SPIN, and Dr. Alessandro Stroppa (AS), Deputy Director of SPIN Unit of L’Aquila, were invited by Prof. Wei Ren, Shanghai University (SHU), to visit several scientific institutions in Shanghai, in order to share common interests for potential collaborations.

A research team which includes a large group of researchers from CNR-SPIN, CNR-IOM together with scientists of University Ca’ Foscari, University of Salerno, and MagTop Research Centre in Warsaw, as well as other national and international partners, has discovered a new state of matter characterized by the existence of a quantum phenomenon dubbed “spin-orbital chiral current”. These currents are generated on an atomic scale by a chiral cooperative movement of electrons, unlike conventional magnetic materials whose properties originate from the quantum characteristic of an electron known as spin and their ordering in the crystal.
Chirality is a property of extreme importance in science. In the quantum phenomenon discovered, the chirality of the currents was detected by studying the interaction between light and matter, in which a suitably polarized photon can emit an electron from the surface of the material with a well-defined spin state.