A twisted new particle could be the key to new information storage techniques of incredible density.

Physicists at the University of Hamburg have discovered a way to create ‘skyrmions’; twisted magnetic vortices which could prove extremely useful in the future of storage on magnetic hard drives, where traditional drives fast approach a density barrier.

The existence of skyrmions is nothing new, but until now there has been no way to selectively create, manipulate or destroy them. That has changed, with scientists developing a technique to successfully tie and untie the tiny vortices to increase their storage capability.

The idea is highly experimental, and will not see inclusion in a commercial device for a number of years, but the theory should allow progress on a level of storage capacity far exceeding current abilities. Skyrmions are appealing to physicists and engineers because of their resistance to unravelling by means of their inherent topological stability.

Topological stability is central to the quest for improved ways to carry information, says Kirsten von Bergmann, a physicist at the University of Hamburg in Germany: “Conventional magnetic storage media, such as the surface of a hard disk, carry information in the form of digital bits — states denoted '0' or '1' that are represented by the magnetization of the atoms, for example with their magnetic north pole pointing up or down. But when they are packed too densely or overheated, these magnetizations can easily become unstable and get scrambled... a skyrmion offers the chance to store information stably, so that it can be read off again as a '0' or a '1' depending on whether or not the magnetic knot exists,” she said.

The research so far on the ground-breaking storage theory has been published in the journal Nature.