Extraction of the Anomalous Nernst Effect in the Electric Measurement of the Spin Orbit Torque

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to distinguish spin orbit torque from the anomalous Nernst effect in measurements, revealing that the Nernst effect can cause significant underestimation of the torque.

Contribution

A novel measurement technique that isolates spin orbit torque from thermoelectric artifacts like the anomalous Nernst effect.

Findings

The anomalous Nernst effect can significantly influence torque measurements.

Spin orbit torque can be underestimated by up to 50% due to Nernst effect.

The developed method effectively separates the two effects in experimental data.

Abstract

Spin orbit torque has been intensively investigated because of its high energy efficiency in manipulating a magnetization. Although various methods for measuring the spin orbit torque have been developed so far, the measurement results often show inconsistency among the methods, implying that an electromotive force, such as Nernst effect, irrelevant to the spin orbit torque may affect the measurement results as an artifact. In this letter, we developed a unique method to distinguish the spin orbit torque and the anomalous Nernst effect. The measurement results show that the spin orbit torque can be underestimated up to 50% under the influence of the anomalous Nernst effect.