Libor Smejkal has predicted a new type of phenomena in the family of spontaneous Hall effects connected to a new type of exchange splitting that depends on the momentum of the electron quasiparticle.
Abstract: Electrons, commonly moving along the applied electric field, acquire in certain magnets a dissipationless transverse velocity. This spontaneous Hall effect, found more than a century ago, has been understood in terms of the time-reversal symmetry breaking by the internal spin structure of a ferromagnetic, noncolinear antiferromagnetic, or skyrmionic form. Here, we identify previously overlooked robust Hall effect mechanism arising from collinear antiferromagnetism combined with nonmagnetic atoms at noncentrosymmetric positions. We predict a large magnitude of this crystal Hall effect in a room temperature collinear antiferromagnet RuO2 and catalog, based on symmetry rules, extensive families of material candidates. We show that the crystal Hall effect is accompanied by the possibility to control its sign by the crystal chirality. We illustrate that accounting for the full magnetization density distribution instead of the simplified spin structure sheds new light on symmetry breaking phenomena in magnets and opens an alternative avenue toward low-dissipation nanoelectronics.
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/23/eaaz8809
Congratulations to Libor Šmejkal for winning the Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year 2023 award in physical sciences.
