Many-body nature of unconventional magnets in correlated electron systems

Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg

The discovery of altermagnetism has renewed interest in unconventional magnetism, with much of the field focusing on the remarkable spin-space-group symmetries that distinguish these states from conventional magnets. But symmetry alone does not tell us what unconventional magnets actually do. The deeper question is how interactions shape these states—and what new forms of quantum order they can generate.
In my talk, I will argue that unconventional magnetism is fundamentally a many-body problem. I will present microscopic models, without imposing mean-field bias, that spontaneously realize unconventional—and in some cases altermagnetic—magnetic parent states and give rise to descendant orders including pair-density-wave superconductivity and loop spin-current order. These examples suggest a broader perspective in which unconventional magnetism is not merely a symmetry classification, but a source of intertwined and emergent quantum orders.