Spontaneous Anomalous Hall Effect Arising from an Unconventional Compensated Magnetic Phase in a Semiconductor

The anomalous Hall effect, commonly observed in metallic magnets, has been established to originate from the time-reversal symmetry breaking by an internal macroscopic magnetization in ferromagnets or by a noncollinear magnetic order. Here we observe a spontaneous anomalous Hall signal in the absence of an external magnetic field in an epitaxial film of MnTe, which is a semiconductor with a collinear antiparallel magnetic ordering of Mn moments and a vanishing net magnetization. The anomalous Hall effect arises from an unconventional phase with strong time-reversal symmetry breaking and alternating spin polarization in real-space crystal structure and momentum-space electronic structure. The anisotropic…

• DF
  Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

  Award: TRR 173/2 SPIN+X—268565370
• AN
  Agence Nationale de la Recherche

  Award: 445976410
• GA
  Grantová Agentura České Republiky

  Award: 22-22000M
• AS
  Austrian Science Fund

  Award: P30960-N27
• HF
  H2020 Future and Emerging Technologies

  Award: 766566
• FR
  FP7 Research infrastructures

  Award: LM2018096