The new method has the potential to allow investigation of a wide range of magnetic properties previously not accessible to ab initio theoretical study.
Magnetic materials represent a multi billion dollar industry.
Despite this great driving force, a microscopic understanding of metallic magnetism has proved to be elusive. These range from a first-principles theory of the magnetic phase transition, to magnetism in inhomogeneous materials, to a microscopic theory of technologically important extrinsic properties such as permeability, coercivity and remanence. The methods that are being developed, coupled with the availability of massively parallel computers, will provide the necessary tools to perform realistic simulations on many of these problems, and have the potential to enable significant advances in magnetic materials research and development.