Enhancement of the anomalous Hall effect by distorting the Kagome lattice in an antiferromagnetic material

Abstract

In topological magnetic materials, the topology of the electronic wave function is strongly coupled to the structure of the magnetic order. In general, ferromagnetic Weyl semimetals generate a strong anomalous Hall conductivity (AHC) due to a large Berry curvature that scales with their magnetization. In contrast, a comparatively small AHC is observed in noncollinear antiferromagnets. We investigated HoAgGe, an antiferromagnetic (AFM) Kagome spin-ice compound, which crystallizes in a hexagonal ZrNiAl-type structure in which Ho atoms are arranged in a distorted Kagome lattice, forming an intermetallic Kagome spin-ice state in the ab -plane. It exhibits a large topological Hall resistivity of ~1.6 µΩ-cm at 2.0 K in a field of ~3 T owing to the noncoplanar structure. Interestingly, a total AHC of 2,800 Ω −1 cm −1 is observed at ~45 K, i.e., 4 T N , which is quite unusual and goes beyond the normal expectation considering HoAgGe as an AFM Kagome spin-ice compound with a T N of ~11 K. We demonstrate further that the AHC below T N results from the nonvanishing Berry curvature generated by the formation of Weyl points under the influence of the external magnetic field, while the skew scattering led by Kagome spins dominates above the T N . These results offer a unique opportunity to study frustration in AFM Kagome lattice compounds.