Strain-induced spontaneous Hall effect in an epitaxial thin film of a Luttinger semimetal

Pyrochlore iridates have provided a plethora of novel phenomena owing to the combination of topology and correlation. Among them, much attention has been paid to Pr₂Ir₂O₇, as it is known as a Luttinger semimetal characterized by quadratic band touching at the Brillouin zone center, suggesting that t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2019-04, Vol.116 (18), p.8803-8808
Main Authors: Ohtsuki, Takumi, Tian, Zhaoming, Endo, Akira, Halim, Mario, Katsumoto, Shingo, Kohama, Yoshimitsu, Kindo, Koichi, Lippmaa, Mikk, Nakatsuji, Satoru
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brillouin zones
Electromagnetism
Electron states
Epitaxial growth
Hall effect
Iridium
Lattice strain
Luttinger semimetal
Magnetic fields
magnetic Weyl semimetal
Magnetism
Magnetoresistance
Magnetoresistivity
MATERIALS SCIENCE
Physical Sciences
spontaneous Hall effect
Thin films
Topology
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Summary:Pyrochlore iridates have provided a plethora of novel phenomena owing to the combination of topology and correlation. Among them, much attention has been paid to Pr₂Ir₂O₇, as it is known as a Luttinger semimetal characterized by quadratic band touching at the Brillouin zone center, suggesting that the topology of its electronic states can be tuned by a moderate lattice strain and external magnetic field. Here, we report that our epitaxial Pr₂Ir₂O₇ thin films grown by solid-state epitaxy exhibit a spontaneous Hall effect that persists up to 50 K without having spontaneous magnetization within our experimental accuracy. This indicates that the system breaks the time reversal symmetry at a temperature scale that is too high for the magnetism to be due to Pr 4f moments and must be related to magnetic order of the iridium 5d electrons. Moreover, our analysis finds that the chiral anomaly induces the negative contribution to the magnetoresistance only when a magnetic field and the electric current are parallel to each other. Our results indicate that the strained part of the thin film forms a magnetic Weyl semimetal state.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1819489116