In recognition of this monumental achievement, three physicists primarily responsible for the breakthrough have been named the recipients of the 2026 Europhysics Prize. This accolade stands as one of Europe’s most prestigious honors in the field of condensed matter physics. The European Physical Society (EPS) Condensed Matter Division selected Professor Jairo Sinova of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), Dr. Libor Šmejkal, and Professor Tomas Jungwirth for their pioneering work in formally establishing altermagnetism as a distinct form of magnetic order, sitting proudly alongside the classical categories of ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism.
"This award recognizes a fundamental discovery that challenged one of the most established paradigms in condensed matter physics," said Professor Jairo Sinova, who also serves as the Director of the Spin Phenomena Interdisciplinary Center (SPICE) at Mainz University. "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."
The breakthrough emerged from years of close international collaboration between Sinova’s vibrant research group at Mainz University and Jungwirth’s distinguished team at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Dr. Šmejkal, who also maintained a vital academic affiliation in Prague, spent eight intensive years at Mainz between 2016 and 2024. During this formative period, he first pursued his doctoral research and later continued his investigations as a postdoctoral scientist within Sinova’s group.
During those years, Šmejkal played a central, leading role in developing the intricate theoretical framework that underpins altermagnetism. By skillfully combining advanced mathematical approaches to spatial and spin symmetries with the principles of spintronics—a burgeoning field that studies how the intrinsic spin of electrons can be harnessed in electronic devices—the researchers successfully identified a previously unrecognized pattern of magnetic behavior hidden within complex crystal lattices.
Their bold theoretical predictions quickly attracted the attention of experimental teams around the world. Subsequent measurements of electronic properties and electrical transport across multiple distinct materials provided concrete, empirical evidence supporting the new magnetic classification. Since these initial proofs, altermagnetism has rapidly grown into one of the most dynamic and active areas of modern condensed matter physics, with research efforts and collaborative laboratories expanding exponentially across Europe, North America, and Asia.
A Third Form of Magnetism Rewrites Physics
For more than 100 years, physicists universally divided collinear magnets into two fundamental categories: ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. This binary classification formed the bedrock of textbooks, taught to generations of students as an exhaustive description of magnetic ordering in materials where atomic magnetic moments align along a common axis.
Ferromagnets are characterized by an overall magnetic alignment where individual atomic moments point in the same direction, producing a strong net magnetization. These materials have served as the backbone of modern civilization, proving essential to a vast array of magnetic storage and memory technologies used throughout the modern world. In stark contrast, conventional antiferromagnets feature neighboring magnetic moments that point in precisely opposing directions, perfectly canceling one another out. This leaves the material with no overall net magnetization and results in electronic behavior that is vastly different from that of ferromagnets.
Altermagnetism now introduces a surprising third possibility that bridges and defies the traditional boundaries of these two states.
Like traditional antiferromagnets, altermagnets have internal magnetic moments that cancel out on a macroscopic scale, resulting in zero net magnetization that prevents them from sticking to refrigerators or straying in magnetic fields. However, at the microscopic level, their electrons can exhibit extraordinary properties previously thought to be exclusive to ferromagnets.
This unusual combination allows altermagnets to support robust electrical currents characterized by strongly polarized electron spins, while simultaneously displaying extremely rapid magnetic dynamics. Those distinct characteristics could make them immensely valuable for the development of a new generation of spintronic devices, potentially advancing the processing speed, energy efficiency, and overall capabilities of future information technologies far beyond current silicon-based limits.
The significance of this discovery extends well beyond electronics and data storage. Altermagnetism fundamentally represents a previously unrecognized symmetry class of matter. As such, it has revealed unexpected and profound connections to several other major areas of modern physics, including topological phenomena, unconventional superconductivity, and complex quantum materials characterized by strong, intricate interactions between electrons.
How Scientists Discovered Altermagnetism
The winding path toward this monumental discovery began modestly with theoretical investigations into unusual ways that electricity moves through certain magnetic materials. Among the early conceptual advances was the prediction of the crystal anomalous Hall effect, a subtle and complex phenomenon involving unconventional electrical transport in specific crystal structures with broken symmetries.
Initially, these unexpected behaviors might easily have appeared to be mere anomalies or isolated eccentricities of individual, highly specialized materials. However, the researchers eventually recognized through persistent analysis that these phenomena were intrinsically connected by a much broader, underlying principle involving the complex symmetries of electron spins.
Rather than representing isolated exceptions to established magnetic behavior, these materials actually belonged to an entirely different, previously unmapped magnetic category. The realization that a whole class of materials was operating under a different set of physical rules changed the trajectory of the research entirely.
A major milestone was achieved in 2022, when the collaborative team published a comprehensive symmetry classification of altermagnetism. In that landmark publication, they identified hundreds of existing and hypothetical materials that could potentially exhibit this hidden magnetic order, giving experimentalists a massive roadmap to follow.
Experimental physicists subsequently tested these bold predictions using several complementary, cutting-edge methods. These techniques included angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), a powerful tool that reveals precisely how electrons behave and distribute themselves inside materials, alongside high-precision measurements of electrical transport under varying magnetic and thermal conditions.
The results triumphantly confirmed altermagnetic behavior in several key materials, helping solidify the new classification on solid experimental ground.
Interest in the discovery has since expanded at a breathtaking pace. Hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers have appeared within just a few short years, and altermagnetism has firmly established itself as a prominent, highly anticipated subject at major international physics conferences. The rapidly growing global research community is now deeply engaged in investigating both its fundamental physical properties and its wide-ranging potential technological applications.
Discovery Earns Prestigious 2026 Europhysics Prize
The Europhysics Prize is widely recognized as a premier accolade honoring major, transformative advances in condensed matter physics—a sprawling field concerned with the diverse physical properties and macroscopic behavior of matter. Established in 1975 by the European Physical Society, the award honors groundbreaking discoveries that have significantly advanced scientific understanding, with a substantial share of the recognized research historically conducted within European research institutions.
The 2026 prize specifically honors the brilliant theoretical and experimental advances that successfully established altermagnetism as a new fundamental form of collinear magnetic order, breaking a century-old binary dogma.
The formal award ceremony was scheduled to take place in September 2026 at the 32nd General Conference of the European Physical Society Condensed Matter Division (CMD32) in Graz, Austria, bringing together leading physicists from around the globe to celebrate the milestone.
The Scientists Behind the Breakthrough
Professor Jairo Sinova is a prominent physics professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany and serves as the director of the university’s specialized Spin Phenomena Interdisciplinary Center. His extensive research career focuses deeply on magnetism, spintronics, and the physics of quantum materials.
Dr. Libor Šmejkal conducted much of the crucial, foundational theoretical work that ultimately led to the definitive identification of altermagnetism during his tenure at Mainz University from 2016 to 2024. His current professional affiliations include 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.
Professor Tomas Jungwirth is dually affiliated with the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the University of Nottingham. He has collaborated extensively and fruitfully with Sinova’s Mainz research team over many years, playing a central, visionary role in establishing the rigorous theoretical foundations of altermagnetism.
Together, the collaborative work of these three scientists has revealed a fundamental property of magnetic matter that successfully escaped human recognition for more than a century, opening an entirely unprecedented direction for research into quantum physics and future electronic technologies.
