Nanomagnets offer clues to how avalanches work

The behavior of avalanches has generated interest among physicists for the insights that they can provide about many other systems, not least of which is how snow falls down a mountainside. To that end, a team of researchers studied microscopic arrays of nanomagnets that provide the first experimental demonstration of a classic theoretical model, known as the "one-dimensional random field Ising model." The results were published today in Physical Review Letters.