Large anomalous Hall effect in the chiral-lattice antiferromagnet CoNb₃S₆

An ordinary Hall effect in a conductor arises due to the Lorentz force acting on the charge carriers. In ferromagnets, an additional contribution to the Hall effect, the anomalous Hall effect (AHE), appears proportional to the magnetization. While the AHE is not seen in a collinear antiferromagnet, with zero net magnetization, recently it has been shown that an intrinsic AHE can be non-zero in non-collinear antiferromagnets as well as in topological materials hosting Weyl nodes near the Fermi energy. Here we report a large anomalous Hall effect with Hall conductivity of 27 Ω^-1 cm^-1 in a chiral-lattice antiferromagnet, CoNb₃S₆ consisting of a small intrinsic ferromagnetic component (≈0.0013 μ_B per Co) along c-axis. This small moment alone cannot explain the observed size of the AHE. We attribute the AHE to either formation of a complex magnetic texture or the combined effect of the small intrinsic moment on the electronic band structure.