Transport evidence of current-induced nematic Dirac valleys in a parity-time-symmetric antiferromagnet

TL;DR

This study provides experimental evidence of current-induced nematic Dirac valleys in a parity-time-symmetric antiferromagnet, revealing nonreciprocal transport phenomena and domain control, with implications for spintronic and valleytronic devices.

Contribution

It reports the first experimental observation of nonreciprocal magnetoresistance linked to valley symmetry breaking in a parity-time-symmetric antiferromagnet.

Findings

Nonreciprocal angular magnetoresistance observed in SrMnBi2.

Broken four-fold symmetry of Dirac valleys identified as the cause.

Electric-magnetic control of antiferromagnetic domains demonstrated.

Abstract

Itinerant antiferromagnets with broken time-reversal symmetry have recently attracted attention, since their spin-split bands enable large magnetotransport responses comparable to ferromagnets despite the negligible spontaneous magnetisation. When the inversion symmetry is further broken by the antiferromagnetic order, the emerging odd-parity multipole order renders the bands spin-degenerate but asymmetric in the momentum space. For such parity-time-symmetric antiferromagnets, it has been predicted that electronic nematicity is induced by current, allowing unconventional nonlinear transport phenomena. However, their experimental evidence has been lacking. Here, we report nonreciprocal angular magnetoresistance in the layered Dirac material SrMnBi$_2$ with parity-time-symmetric antiferromagnetic order in its Mn-Bi layers. By quantitatively modelling the angular and field dependencies using a phenomenological framework, we reveal that the observed nonreciprocal interlayer resistivity arises from the broken four-fold symmetry of the Dirac valleys in the Bi square net adjacent to the Mn-Bi layer. Furthermore, we demonstrate the alignment of parity-time-symmetric antiferromagnetic domains via current-field cooling, achieving electric-magnetic control of the $f$-wave polarity in momentum space. The observed switchable nonreciprocal transport associated with current-induced valley symmetry breaking paves the way for novel antiferromagnetic spintronic and valleytronic applications.