By Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendor, First Published,17th May,2026 Researchers discovered that atomic rotations inside a crystal can unexpectedly flip direction while still obeying the laws of angular momentum conservation. An international team of researchers, including scientists from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, has directly observed for the first time how angular momentum moves and remains conserved inside a crystal lattice. By using powerful terahertz laser pulses, the team was able to precisely manipulate these motions and discovered an unexpected effect: during the transfer process, the direction of…
