Magnetic properties of thin films · Lab experiment

Meet the hopfion: a ring-shaped swirl of magnetism.

Paper: Laser-induced nucleation of magnetic hopfions
Chen et al. · Nature Physics 2026 · doi.org/10.1038/s41567-026-03236-0

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Meet the hopfion: a ring-shaped swirl of magnetism. Theory said it could exist on its own. In magnetic crystals, nobody had seen one alone. Now laser light has created isolated hopfions.

AI-assisted summary with an AI voice, not reviewed by the authors. Made from the paper under its CC BY licence. Read the paper before relying on a finding. Keywords: magnetic hopfions, laser-induced nucleation, topological solitons, FeGe, skyrmions, topological invariants.