Research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source promises four-bit magnetic cells instead of the two-bit magnetic domains of standard magnetic memories. Magnetic vortices are whirlpools of magnetic field, in which electron spins point either clockwise or counterclockwise. In the crowded center of the whirlpool the spins point either down or up. These four orientations could represent separate bits of information in a new kind of memory, if controlled independently and simultaneously.
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