Journal Article

Large anomalous Hall effect in the chiral-lattice antiferromagnet CoNb3S6

Ghimire, Nirmal J., Jiang, J. S., Zhang, Junjie, Chen, Y.-S., Mitchell, J. F., Botana, A. S.

2018

Overview

An ordinary Hall effect in a conductor arises due to the Lorentz force acting on the charge carriers. In ferromagnets, an additional contribution to the Hall effect, the anomalous Hall effect (AHE), appears proportional to the magnetization. While the AHE is not seen in a collinear antiferromagnet, with zero net magnetization, recently it has been shown that an intrinsic AHE can be non-zero in non-collinear antiferromagnets as well as in topological materials hosting Weyl nodes near the Fermi energy. Here we report a large anomalous Hall effect with Hall conductivity of 27 Ω −1  cm −1 in a chiral-lattice antiferromagnet, CoNb 3 S 6 consisting of a small intrinsic ferromagnetic component (≈0.0013  μ B per Co) along c -axis. This small moment alone cannot explain the observed size of the AHE. We attribute the AHE to either formation of a complex magnetic texture or the combined effect of the small intrinsic moment on the electronic band structure. Anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in antiferromagnets is intriguing and requires further understanding. Here the authors report large AHE in a chiral-lattice antiferromagnet CoNb 3 S 6 of which the origin can be due to complex magnetic texture or broken time-reversal symmetry on the electronic band structure.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Nature Portfolio
• Subject: 639/301/119/997 / 639/766/119/1001 / Anomalous Hall effect / Antiferromagnetism / Chiral magnetic textures / Conductors / Current carriers / Electromagnetism / Ferromagnetism / Gamma rays / Hall effect / Humanities and Social Sciences / Lorentz force / Magnetism / Magnetization / MATERIALS SCIENCE / multidisciplinary / Non-collinear antiferromagnet / Non-coplanar antiferromagnet / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Weyl semimetal