Surprisingly large anomalous Hall effect and giant negative magnetoresistance in half-topological semimetals

TL;DR

This study uncovers a new mechanism in half-topological semimetals near a critical point that causes exceptionally large anomalous Hall effects and giant negative magnetoresistance, with potential applications in spintronics.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that half-topological semimetals near a critical point can exhibit unprecedented AHE and magnetoresistance, supported by experimental and theoretical analysis of TbPdBi.

Findings

Large anomalous Hall angle in TbPdBi's ferromagnetic phase

Distinct Hall resistivity peak in canted antiferromagnetic phase

Nearly isotropic, giant negative magnetoresistance (~98%)

Abstract

Large intrinsic anomalous Hall effect (AHE) due to the Berry curvature in magnetic topological semimetals is attracting enormous interest due to its fundamental importance and technological relevance. Mechanisms resulting in large intrinsic AHE include diverging Berry curvature in Weyl semimetals, anticrossing nodal rings or points of non-trivial bands, and noncollinear spin structures. Here we show that a half-topological semimetal (HTS) state near a topological critical point can provide a new mechanism for driving an exceptionally large AHE. We reveal this through a systematic experimental and theoretical study of the antiferromagnetic (AFM) half-Heusler compound TbPdBi. We not only observed an unusual AHE with a surprisingly large anomalous Hall angle {\Theta}H (tan {\Theta}H ~ 2, the largest among the antiferromagnets) in its field-driven ferromagnetic (FM) phase, but also found a distinct Hall resistivity peak in the canted AFM phase within a low field range, where its isothermal magnetization is nearly linearly dependent on the field. Moreover, we observed a nearly isotropic, giant negative magnetoresistance with a magnitude of ~98%. Our in-depth theoretical modelling demonstrates that these exotic transport properties originate from the HTS state. A minimal Berry curvature cancellation between the trivial spin-up and nontrivial spin-down bands results not only in an extremely large AHE, but it also enhances the spin polarization of the spin-down bands substantially and thus leads to a giant negative magnetoresistance. Our study advances the understanding of the interplay between band topology and magnetism and offers new clues for materials design for spintronics and other applications.