Anomalous Hall Effect in $t_{2g}$ Orbital Kagome Lattice due to Non-collinearity:Significance of Orbital Aharonov-Bohm Effect

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new orbital Aharonov-Bohm mechanism for the anomalous Hall effect in tilted ferromagnetic metals with non-collinear spins, emphasizing the role of d-orbitals and Berry phases.

Contribution

It introduces a novel orbital-derived Berry phase mechanism for AHE, explaining experimental features in pyrochlore Nd$_2$Mo$_2$O$_7$ and predicting effects in other frustrated systems.

Findings

Orbital Berry phase significantly enhances AHE in non-collinear spin structures.

The mechanism explains AHE in pyrochlore Nd$_2$Mo$_2$O$_7$.

AHE can occur even with coplanar spin orders.

Abstract

A new mechanism of spin structure-driven anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in tilted ferromagnetic metals is proposed by taking account of the d-orbital degree of freedom. We find that a conduction electron acquires a Berry phase due to the complex d-orbital wavefunction, in the presence of non-collinear spin structure and the spin orbit interaction. The AHE driven by this orbital-derived Berry phase is much larger than the AHE induced by spin chirality, and it naturally explains the salient features of spin structure-driven AHE in pyrochlore Nd$_2$Mo$_2$O$_7$. Since the proposed AHE can occur even for coplanar spin orders ($M_z=0$), it is expected to emerge in other interesting geometrically frustrated systems.