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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) together with colleagues from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, USA have found a way to write and delete magnets in an alloy using a laser beam - a surprising effect. The reversibility of the process opens up new possibilities in the fields of material processing, optical technology, and data storage.

Researchers of the HZDR, an independent German research laboratory, studied an alloy of iron and aluminum. It is interesting as a prototype material because subtle changes to its atomic arrangement can completely transform its magnetic behavior.

"The alloy possesses a highly ordered structure, with layers of iron atoms that are separated by aluminum atomic layers. When a laser beam destroys this order, the iron atoms are brought closer together and begin to behave like magnets," says HZDR physicist Rantej Bali.

Bali and his team prepared a thin film of the alloy on top of transparent magnesia through which a laser beam was shone on the film. When they, together with researchers of the HZB, directed a well-focused laser beam with a pulse of 100 femtoseconds (a femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second) at the alloy, a ferromagnetic area was formed. Shooting laser pulses at the same area again - this time at reduced laser intensity - was then used to delete the magnet.

Original Submission