Progress and prospects in magnetic topological materials

TL;DR

Magnetic topological materials are a rapidly advancing field with significant progress in understanding their properties, discovering new phases, and exploring potential applications in electronics and spintronics.

Contribution

This review summarizes recent theoretical predictions, experimental discoveries, and the classification of magnetic topological phases, highlighting new materials and topological phenomena.

Findings

Prediction of Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect without Landau levels

Discovery of magnetic Weyl semimetals and antiferromagnetic topological insulators

Tabulation of magnetic symmetry group representations and topological classifications

Abstract

Magnetic topological materials represent a class of compounds whose properties are strongly influenced by the topology of the electronic wavefunctions coupled with the magnetic spin configuration. Such materials can support chiral electronic channels of perfect conduction, and can be used for an array of applications from information storage and control to dissipationless spin and charge transport. Here, we review the theoretical and experimental progress achieved in the field of magnetic topological materials beginning with the theoretical prediction of the Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect without Landau levels, and leading to the recent discoveries of magnetic Weyl semimetals and antiferromagnetic topological insulators. We outline the recent theoretical progress that resulted in the tabulation, for the first time, of all magnetic symmetry group representations and topology. We describe several experiments realizing Chern insulators, Weyl and Dirac magnetic semimetals, and an array of axionic and higher-order topological phases of matter as well as survey future perspectives.