Observation of the nonlinear Hall effect under time-reversal-symmetric conditions

Qiong Ma, Su-Yang Xu, Huitao Shen, David MacNeill, Valla Fatemi, Tay-Rong Chang, Andrés M. Mier Valdivia, Sanfeng Wu, Zongzheng Du, Chuang-Han Hsu, Shiang Fang, Quinn D. Gibson, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Robert J. Cava, Efthimios Kaxiras, Hai-Zhou Lu, Hsin Lin, Liang Fu, Nuh Gedik () and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero ()
Additional contact information
Qiong Ma: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Su-Yang Xu: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Huitao Shen: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
David MacNeill: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Valla Fatemi: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tay-Rong Chang: National Cheng Kung University
Andrés M. Mier Valdivia: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sanfeng Wu: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Zongzheng Du: Southern University of Science and Technology
Chuang-Han Hsu: National University of Singapore
Shiang Fang: Harvard University
Quinn D. Gibson: Princeton University
Kenji Watanabe: National Institute for Materials Science
Takashi Taniguchi: National Institute for Materials Science
Robert J. Cava: Princeton University
Efthimios Kaxiras: Harvard University
Hai-Zhou Lu: Southern University of Science and Technology
Hsin Lin: Academia Sinica
Liang Fu: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Nuh Gedik: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Pablo Jarillo-Herrero: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nature, 2019, vol. 565, issue 7739, 337-342

Abstract: Abstract The electrical Hall effect is the production, upon the application of an electric field, of a transverse voltage under an out-of-plane magnetic field. Studies of the Hall effect have led to important breakthroughs, including the discoveries of Berry curvature and topological Chern invariants1,2. The internal magnetization of magnets means that the electrical Hall effect can occur in the absence of an external magnetic field2; this ‘anomalous’ Hall effect is important for the study of quantum magnets2–7. The electrical Hall effect has rarely been studied in non-magnetic materials without external magnetic fields, owing to the constraint of time-reversal symmetry. However, only in the linear response regime—when the Hall voltage is linearly proportional to the external electric field—does the Hall effect identically vanish as a result of time-reversal symmetry; the Hall effect in the nonlinear response regime is not subject to such symmetry constraints8–10. Here we report observations of the nonlinear Hall effect10 in electrical transport in bilayers of the non-magnetic quantum material WTe2 under time-reversal-symmetric conditions. We show that an electric current in bilayer WTe2 leads to a nonlinear Hall voltage in the absence of a magnetic field. The properties of this nonlinear Hall effect are distinct from those of the anomalous Hall effect in metals: the nonlinear Hall effect results in a quadratic, rather than linear, current–voltage characteristic and, in contrast to the anomalous Hall effect, the nonlinear Hall effect results in a much larger transverse than longitudinal voltage response, leading to a nonlinear Hall angle (the angle between the total voltage response and the applied electric field) of nearly 90 degrees. We further show that the nonlinear Hall effect provides a direct measure of the dipole moment10 of the Berry curvature, which arises from layer-polarized Dirac fermions in bilayer WTe2. Our results demonstrate a new type of Hall effect and provide a way of detecting Berry curvature in non-magnetic quantum materials.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0807-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:565:y:2019:i:7739:d:10.1038_s41586-018-0807-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0807-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().