A guide that routes static magnetic fields as easily as fiber optics carry light could one day see applications as diverse as stepping up voltage in a transformer or manipulating a tiny quantum system. Now researchers led by Alvar Sanchez of the Autonomous University of Barcelona have taken the first step toward developing that routing technology, with a device they call the magnetic hose. The hose works because it is made from a material that has an anisotropic magnetic permeability and thus responds differently to magnetic fields entering it from different directions. The figure illustrates the theory for the extreme case of an infinite slab with infinite permeability in the vertical (z) direction and zero permeability in the orthogonal directions. Within the material, the field (white lines) is totally vertical. As a result, the dipole field (whose z component is illustrated by the colors) is faithfully transmitted across...

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