Nonlinear planar Hall effect

 · Invited

Abstract

An intriguing property of a three-dimensional (3D) topological insulator is the existence of surface states with spin-momentum locking, which offers a new frontier of exploration in spintronics. Here, we report the observation of a new type of Hall effect in a 3D topological insulator Bi2Se3 film. The Hall resistance scales linearly with both the applied electric and magnetic fields and exhibits a π/2 angle offset with respect to its longitudinal counterpart, in contrast to the usual angle offset of π/4 between the linear planar Hall effect and the anisotropic magnetoresistance. This novel nonlinear planar Hall effect originates from the conversion of a nonlinear transverse spin current to a charge current due to the concerted actions of spin-momentum locking and time-reversal symmetry breaking, which also exists in a wide class of non-centrosymmetric materials with a large span of magnitudes. This provides a new way to characterize and utilize the nonlinear spin-to-charge conversion in a variety of topological quantum materials.

*
The work was partially funded by the Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund (MOE AcRF) Tier 1 (R-263-000- D61-114) and SpOT-LITE programme (A*STAR Grant No. A18A6b0057) through RIE2020 funds from Singapore. The work by S. S.-L. Z. and G. V. at the University of Missouri on initial development of the theoretical framework was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant No. DMR-1406568, and work by S. S.-L. Z. and O. G. H. at Argonne National Laboratory on further theoretical development, data analysis and manuscript writing was supported by Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division.

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Presenters

  • Giovanni Vignale

    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, Univ of Missouri - Columbia
    • Univ of Missouri - Columbia

Authors

  • Giovanni Vignale

    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, Univ of Missouri - Columbia
    • Univ of Missouri - Columbia

  • Pan He

    • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore
    • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and NUSNNI, National University of Singapore

  • Dapeng Zhu

    • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore
    • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and NUSNNI, National University of Singapore

  • Shuyuan Shi

    • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore
    • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and NUSNNI, National University of Singapore

  • Hyunsoo Yang

    • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore
    • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and NUSNNI, National University of Singapore
    • National University of Singapore

  • Steven S -L Zhang

    • case western reserve university
    • Department of Physics, Case Western University

  • Olle Heinonen

    • Materials Science Division, Argonne National Lab
    • Argonne National Laboratory
    • Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory
    • Argonne Natl Lab