Chaos generated with a nanoscale magnetic vortex

Magnetic vortices are nanoscale whirls that gyrate like spinning tops, tracing out paths in a clockwise or counter-clockwise manner in nanometer-thick materials. Under certain conditions, this sense of gyration can flip repeatedly, resulting in complex patterns of behavior. Now, a team of physicists in France, led by Joo-Von Kim, CNRS researcher at C2N, have shown that chaos underpins such nanoscale motion. This translates into arbitrarily complex electrical signals that could be used for generating random numbers or securing communications channels.