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Large anomalous Hall current induced by topological nodal lines in a ferromagnetic van der Waals semimetal

Abstract

Topological semimetals host electronic structures with several band-contact points or lines and are generally expected to exhibit strong topological responses. Up to now, most work has been limited to non-magnetic materials and the interplay between topology and magnetism in this class of quantum materials has been largely unexplored. Here we utilize theoretical calculations, magnetotransport and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to propose Fe3GeTe2, a van der Waals material, as a candidate ferromagnetic (FM) nodal line semimetal. We find that the spin degree of freedom is fully quenched by the large FM polarization, but the line degeneracy is protected by crystalline symmetries that connect two orbitals in adjacent layers. This orbital-driven nodal line is tunable by spin orientation due to spin–orbit coupling and produces a large Berry curvature, which leads to a large anomalous Hall current, angle and factor. These results demonstrate that FM topological semimetals hold significant potential for spin- and orbital-dependent electronic functionalities.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank H. W. Lee, S. Wimmer and M. H. Lee for fruitful discussion. This work was supported by the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) through the Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic Systems (no. IBS-R014-D1), by POSCO through the Green Science programme, and also by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea through the SRC (no. 2011-0030785) and the Max Planck-POSTECH Center for Complex Phase Materials in Korea (MPK) (no. 2016K1A4A4A01922028). B.-J.Y was supported by the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Korea (no. IBS-R009-D1), NRF through Basic Science Research Programs (no. 0426-20170012 and no. 0426-20180011) and the POSCO Science Fellowship of POSCO TJ Park Foundation (no. 0426-20180002). K.K. was supported by NRF through Basic Research Programs (no. 2016R1D1A1B02008461 and no. NRF-2017M2A2A6A01071297), KISTI (no. KSC-2015-C3-068) and MPK (no. 2016K1A4A4A01922028). E.L. and C.K. were supported by IBS (no. IBS-R009-D1 and no. IBS-R009-G2). W.K. was supported by NRF (no. 2015-001948) and Y.J.J. was also supported by NRF (no. 2016R1A2B4016656).

Author information

Authors

Contributions

K.K., B.G.J., J.H.S. and B.I.M. performed the band-structure calculations. E.L. and B.-J.Y. did the theoretical analysis. J.S. and J.S.K. conceived the experiments. J.S. and J.M.O. synthesized the samples. J.S., J.M.O., Y.J. and W.K. carried out the transport and the magnetization measurements. K.-T.K, B.S.K. and C.K. performed the ARPES experiments and analysed the results. J.L. and H.W.Y. contributed to the STM measurements and the analysis. K.K., J.S., B.-J.Y. and J.S.K. co-wrote the manuscript. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Bohm-Jung Yang or Jun Sung Kim.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–5, Supplementary Figures 1–13, Supplementary Tables 1–3, Supplementary References 1–33

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Kim, K., Seo, J., Lee, E. et al. Large anomalous Hall current induced by topological nodal lines in a ferromagnetic van der Waals semimetal. Nature Mater 17, 794–799 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0132-3

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• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0132-3

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