Arnab Bose
Recently a new type of magnetic material is theoretically proposed, referred to as “altermagnet” which is a collinear antiferromagnet in real space although hosting the spin-split bands in the momentum space that allows it to exhibit the properties of ferromagnet depending upon the direction of the current flow with respect to the crystal axis [1,2]. We report the first experimental evidence of strongly crystal axis-dependent unconventional transverse spin-current generation by the altermagnet RuO2 [3] arising from the novel spin-split bands as theoretically predicted [1]. This unconventional tilted spin-current is the key to the implementation of high-density nonvolatile magnetic memories.
Reference
[1] R. González-Hernández, L. Šmejkal, K. Výborný, Y. Yahagi, J. Sinova, T. Jungwirth, and J. Železný, Efficient Electrical Spin Splitter Based on Nonrelativistic Collinear Antiferromagnetism, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 127701 (2021).
[2] L. Šmejkal, J. Sinova, and T. Jungwirth, Emerging Research Landscape of Altermagnetism, ArXiv: 2204.10844, 1 (2022).
[3] A. Bose, N. J. Schreiber, R. Jain, D.-F. Shao, H. P. Nair, J. Sun, X. S. Zhang, D. A. Muller, E. Y. Tsymbal, D. G. Schlom, and D. C. Ralph, Tilted Spin Current Generated by the Collinear Antiferromagnet Ruthenium Dioxide, Nat. Electron. 5, 267 (2022).