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Spontaneous Anomalous Hall Effect Arising from an Unconventional Compensated Magnetic Phase in a Semiconductor
R D Gonzalez Betancourt1,2,3, J Zubáč2,4, R Gonzalez-Hernandez5
1Institute of Solid State and Materials Physics, Technical University Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany.
None:
The anomalous Hall effect, commonly observed in metallic magnets, has been established to originate from the time-reversal symmetry breaking by an internal macroscopic magnetization in ferromagnets or by a noncollinear magnetic order. Here we observe a spontaneous anomalous Hall signal in the absence of an external magnetic field in an epitaxial film of MnTe, which is a semiconductor with a collinear antiparallel magnetic ordering of Mn moments and a vanishing net magnetization. The anomalous Hall effect arises from an unconventional phase with strong time-reversal symmetry breaking and alternating spin polarization in real-space crystal structure and momentum-space electronic structure. The anisotropic crystal environment of magnetic Mn atoms due to the nonmagnetic Te atoms is essential for establishing the unconventional phase and generating the anomalous Hall effect.
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