Nonlinear Planar Hall Effect

Pan He, Steven S.-L. Zhang, Dapeng Zhu, Shuyuan Shi, Olle G. Heinonen, Giovanni Vignale, and Hyunsoo Yang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 016801 – Published 1 July 2019

Abstract

An intriguing property of a three-dimensional (3D) topological insulator (TI) 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 TI ${Bi}_{2} {Se}_{3}$ 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 noncentrosymmetric materials with a large span of magnitude. It provides a new way to characterize and utilize the nonlinear spin-to-charge conversion in a variety of topological quantum materials.

Received 12 December 2018
Revised 7 May 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.016801

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Hall effect Spin current Spintronics Topological materials

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Pan He^1,*, Steven S.-L. Zhang^2,3,*, Dapeng Zhu¹, Shuyuan Shi¹, Olle G. Heinonen², Giovanni Vignale³, and Hyunsoo Yang^1,†

¹Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and NUSNNI, National University of Singapore, 117576 Singapore
²Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois 60439, USA
³Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211, USA