<ul data-eligibleForWebStory="true"><li>A new theoretical result suggests that quantum double-exchange ferromagnets exhibit two distinctive features due to quantum spin effects and multiorbital physics, eliminating the need for previously invoked lattice vibrations.</li><li>Giant magnetoresistance in these materials, discovered in the late 1980s by Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg, has been crucial for increasing the storage capacity of hard-disk drives and earned Fert and Grünberg a Nobel Prize in 2007.</li><li>Physicist Jacek Herbrych led a research effort to understand how electron spins in these materials become aligned due to Coulomb interactions, with two mechanisms known for insulating and metallic ferromagnets.</li><li>The study focused on the two-orbital Hubbard-Kanamori model and the Kondo lattice model to explore features related to magnons, revealing magnon mode softening and magnon damping can arise from quantum spin effects and multiorbital physics.</li></ul>

New mechanism explains behaviour of materials exhibiting giant magnetoresistance

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