Pancharatnam-Berry phase and kinetic magnetoelectric effect in a three-dimensional helical crystal (Te)

TL;DR

This paper investigates the kinetic magnetoelectric effect in p-doped trigonal tellurium, revealing how intrinsic and extrinsic contributions vary with doping levels, and highlighting potential spintronics applications of three-dimensional helical metals.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the doping-dependent kinetic magnetoelectric response in tellurium, including both intrinsic and extrinsic effects, which was not previously characterized.

Findings

Intrinsic effects dominate at low doping levels.

Extrinsic effects dominate at high doping levels.

Tellurium shows promise for spintronics applications.

Abstract

We study the kinetic magnetoelectric effect (current-induced magnetization including both the orbital and spin contributions) in three-dimensional conductors, specializing to the case of p-doped trigonal tellurium. We include both intrinsic and extrinsic contributions to the effect, which stem from the band structure of the crystal, and from disorder scattering, respectively. Specifically, we determine the dependence of the kinetic magnetoelectric response on the hole doping in tellurium, and show that the intrinsic and extrinsic effects dominate for low and high levels of doping, respectively. The results of this work imply that three-dimensional helical metals are promising for spintronics applications, in particular, they can provide robust control over current-induced magnetic torques.