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Giant topological Hall effect in correlated oxide thin films

Nature Physics volume 15, pages 67–72 (2019)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 26 October 2018

Abstract

Strong electronic correlations can produce remarkable phenomena such as metal–insulator transitions and greatly enhance superconductivity, thermoelectricity or optical nonlinearity. In correlated systems, spatially varying charge textures also amplify magnetoelectric effects or electroresistance in mesostructures. However, how spatially varying spin textures may influence electron transport in the presence of correlations remains unclear. Here we demonstrate a very large topological Hall effect (THE) in thin films of a lightly electron-doped charge-transfer insulator, (Ca,Ce)MnO3. Magnetic force microscopy reveals the presence of magnetic bubbles, whose density as a function of magnetic field peaks near the THE maximum. The THE critically depends on carrier concentration and diverges at low doping, near the metal–insulator transition. We discuss the strong amplification of the THE by correlation effects and give perspectives for its non-volatile control by electric fields.

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Fig. 1: Doping-dependent structural, electronic and magnetic properties of Ca1−xCexMnO3 thin films.
Fig. 2: Topological Hall effect in 4% CCMO.
Fig. 3: Connection between micromagnetism and THE.
Fig. 4: Doping dependence of the THE.

Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank V. Cros, V. Dobrosavljevic, J. Iñiguez, J.-V. Kim, D. Maccariello, J. Matsuno, I. Mertig, N. Nagaosa and N. Reyren for useful discussions, J.-Y. Chauleau and M. Viret for second harmonic generation experiments, N. Jaouen for resonant magnetic X-ray diffraction, J. Varignon for preparing Fig. 1a and J.-M. George for his help with some magnetotransport measurements. This research received financial support from the ERC Consolidator grant ‘MINT’ (contract no. 615759) and ANR project ‘FERROMON’. This work was also supported by a public grant overseen by the ANR as part of the ‘Investissement d’Avenir’ programme (LABEX NanoSaclay, ref. ANR-10-LABX-0035) through projects ‘FERROMOTT’ and ‘AXION’ and by the Spanish Government through project no. MAT2014-56063-C2-1-R and MAT2017-85232-R (AEI/FEDER, UE), and Severo Ochoa SEV-2015-0496 and the Generalitat de Catalunya (2014SGR 734 project). B.C. acknowledges grant no. FPI BES-2012-059023, R.C. acknowledges support from CNPq-Brazil, and J.S. thanks the University Paris-Saclay (D’Alembert programme) and CNRS for financing his stay at CNRS/Thales. Work at Rutgers was supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, US Department of Energy under award no. DE-SC0018153. H.K. is supported by JSPS KAKENHI grants nos. 25400339, 15H05702 and 17H02929. K.N. is supported by a Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellow grant no. 16J05516, and by a Program for Leading Graduate Schools ‘Integrative Graduate Education and Research in Green Natural Sciences’.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Anke Sander and Qiuxiang Zhu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unité Mixte de Physique, CNRS, Thales, Université Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, Palaiseau, France

    Lorenzo Vistoli, Anke Sander, Qiuxiang Zhu, Agnès Barthélémy, Stéphane Fusil, Vincent Garcia & Manuel Bibes

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    Wenbo Wang & Weida Wu

  3. Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), Campus de la UAB, Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain

    Blai Casals, Rafael Cichelero & Gervasi Herranz

  4. Université d’Evry, Université Paris-Saclay, Evry, France

    Stéphane Fusil

  5. Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialen & Energie, Berlin, Germany

    Sergio Valencia, Radu Abrudan & Eugen Weschke

  6. Department of Earth and Space Science, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

    Kazuki Nakazawa

  7. Department of Physics, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    Kazuki Nakazawa & Hiroshi Kohno

  8. GFMC, Dpto. Física de Materiales, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Jacobo Santamaria

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  1. Lorenzo Vistoli
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Contributions

M.B. proposed the study and supervised it with V.G. L.V., A.S. and Q.Z. prepared the samples and performed X-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy. L.V. and A.S. performed the magnetic characterization and magnetotransport experiments, and analysed the data with M.B. and V.G. B.C., G.H. and R.C. performed the magneto-optical Kerr effect measurement experiments. W.Wa. and W.Wu. performed the MFM experiments and analysed them with V.G. and S.F. S.V., R.A. and E.W. performed X-ray absorption spectroscopy experiments. K.N. and H.K. developed the theoretical model, with inputs from J.S., A.B. and M.B. M.B. wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the data and contributed to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Manuel Bibes.

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Vistoli, L., Wang, W., Sander, A. et al. Giant topological Hall effect in correlated oxide thin films. Nature Phys 15, 67–72 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0307-5

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