Credit: Image courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory
Cartoon showing the arrangement of ytterbium atoms in the crystalline compound made of ytterbium, platinum, and lead (Yb2Pt2Pb). The red and blue “pin cushions” denote the atomic orbitals associated with the large magnetic moments of ytterbium with the arrows showing the direction of the magnetic moments. Magnetic coupling (through electron hopping) occurs only where lobes of neighboring orbitals point towards one another and share the same color, a condition satisfied only along horizontal chains.