An experiment was conducted by Princeton researchers to understand why mysterious objects dubbed as ‘frustrated magnets’ are disconnected. The researchers said the study results have opened doors for advancement in understanding high-temperature superconductivity mechanism in electricity.

The findings of the study have been published in the Science journal this week. The theory behind frustrated magnets suggest that they should be magnetic at lower than average temperatures, but they do not show anything to be magnetic. The researchers made an attempt to figure out whether they can exhibit the Hall Effect.

The effect was discovered by E.H. Hall in 1879. The current deflects to only one side of a copper ribbon after an electric current is affected by a magnetic field. Sensors in electronic devices, like the Science journal this, are created using Hall Effect.

According to N. Phuan Ong, Professor of Physics at Princeton, what is intriguing about frustrate magnets is the speculation by several theorists that the material should have their spins aligned in the same direction.

But the experiment on the pyrochlores has yielded different result, showing that the spins only pointed at seemingly random directions. According to Ong, geometric frustration does not allow to align them.

The researchers are now looking forward to conduct further researches on the said frustrated materials to determine how superconductivity happens in specific high-temperature superconductors known as cuprates. According to Science Codex, MRI machines are created using these copper-containing materials.

“All of us were very surprised because we work and play in the classical, non-quantum world. Quantum behavior can seem very strange, and this is one example where something that shouldn't happen is really there. It really exists”, Ong said.