Speeding up data storage by a thousand times with 'spin current'

The storage capacity of hard drives is increasing explosively, but the speed with which all that data can be written has reached its limits. Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology and the FOM Foundation present a promising new technology which potentially allows data to be stored 1,000 times as fast in Nature Communications on July 10. The technology, in which ultra-short laser pulses generate a 'spin current,' also opens the way to future optical computer chips.