Anomalous Hall effect arising from noncollinear antiferromagnetism

Understand

In most conductors current flow perpendicular to electric field direction (Hall current) can be explained in terms of the Lorentz forces present when charged particles flow in an external magnetic field.

• However, as established in the very early work of Edwin Hall, ferromagnetic conductors such as Fe, Co, and Ni have an anomalous Hall conductivity contribution that cannot be attributed to Lorentz forces and therefore survives in the absence of a magnetic field.
• Although the anomalous Hall effect is experimentally strong, it has stood alone among metallic transport effects for much of the last century because it lacked a usefully predictive, generally accepted theory.
• Progress over the past decade has explained why.