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Symmetry, microscopy and spectroscopy signatures of altermagnetism

Nature volume 649, pages 837–847 (2026)Cite this article

Abstract

The recent discovery of altermagnetism was in part motivated by the research of compensated magnets towards highly scalable spintronic technologies. Simultaneously, altermagnetism shares the anisotropic higher-partial-wave nature of ordering with unconventional superfluid phases, which have been at the forefront of research for the past several decades. These examples illustrate the interest in altermagnetism from a broad range of science and technology perspectives. Here we review the symmetry, microscopy and spectroscopy signatures of altermagnetism. We describe the spontaneously broken and retained symmetries that delineate altermagnetism as a distinct phase of matter with d-, g- or i-wave compensated collinear spin ordering. In materials ranging from weakly interacting metals to strongly correlated insulators, the microscopic crystal-structure realizations of the altermagnetic symmetries feature a characteristic ferroic order of anisotropic higher-partial-wave components of atomic-scale spin densities. These symmetry and microscopy signatures of altermagnetism are directly reflected in spin-dependent electronic spectra and responses. We review salient band-structure features originating from the altermagnetic ordering, and from its interplay with spin–orbit coupling and topological phenomena. Throughout, we compare altermagnetism with traditional ferromagnetism and Néel antiferromagnetism, and with magnetic phases with symmetry-protected compensated non-collinear spin orders. We accompany the theoretical discussions with references to relevant experiments.

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Fig. 1: Ferromagnetism and altermagnetism versus conventional and unconventional superfluidity.
Fig. 2: Magnets with compensated spin ordering.
Fig. 3: g-wave and d-wave altermagnets and a non-coplanar magnet.
Fig. 4: Salient electronic structure features of altermagnets.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge R. Jaeschke-Ubiergo and A. Birk Hellenes for discussions and sharing unpublished results. T.J. acknowledges support by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic CZ.02.01.01/00/22008/0004594 and ERC Advanced Grant number 101095925. R.M.F. acknowledges support by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award number FA9550-21-1-0423. J.S. and L.Š. acknowledge support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) - DFG (Project 452301518) and TRR 288 - 422213477 (project A09). L.Š. acknowledges support by the ERC Starting Grant number 101165122. S.N. acknowledges support by the JST-MIRAI Program (JPMJMI20A1), the JST-ASPIRE Program (JPMJAP2317) and by the fund made by Canadian Institute for Advanced Research; the work at the Institute for Quantum Matter was funded by DOE, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under Award number DE-SC0024469. S.M. acknowledges support by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), KAKENHI Grant No. JP22H00108 and No. JP24H02231.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    Tomas Jungwirth & Libor Šmejkal

  2. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Tomas Jungwirth

  3. Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany

    Jairo Sinova

  4. Department of Physics, The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Rafael M. Fernandes

  5. Anthony J. Leggett Institute for Condensed Matter Theory, The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Rafael M. Fernandes

  6. Department of Physics, State key laboratory of quantum functional materials and Guangdong Basic Research Center of Excellence for Quantum Science, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Qihang Liu

  7. Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Hikaru Watanabe & Satoru Nakatsuji

  8. Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany

    Hikaru Watanabe & Libor Šmejkal

  9. Department of Applied Physics, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Shuichi Murakami

  10. International Institute for Sustainability with Knotted Chiral Meta Matter (WPI-SKCM2), Hiroshima University, Higashi-hiroshima, Japan

    Shuichi Murakami

  11. Center for Emergent Matter Science, RIKEN, Saitama, Japan

    Shuichi Murakami

  12. Institute for Solid State Physics, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan

    Satoru Nakatsuji

  13. Institute for Quantum Matter and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Satoru Nakatsuji

  14. Trans-scale Quantum Science Institute, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Satoru Nakatsuji

  15. Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, Germany

    Libor Šmejkal

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  1. Tomas Jungwirth
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T.J. and L.S. wrote the initial paper. T.J., J.S., R.M.F., Q.L., H.W., S.M., S.N. and L.Š. contributed to the selection of the content, and read and commented on the paper.

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Jungwirth, T., Sinova, J., Fernandes, R.M. et al. Symmetry, microscopy and spectroscopy signatures of altermagnetism. Nature 649, 837–847 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09883-2

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