Unidirectional Magnetoresistance in Antiferromagnet/Heavy-metal bilayers

Abstract

The interplay between electronic transport and antiferromagnetic order has attracted a surge of interest as recent studies have shown that a moderate change in the spin orientation of a collinear antiferromagnet may have a significant effect on the electronic band structure. Among numerous electrical probes to read out such magnetic order, unidirectional magnetoresistance (UMR), where the resistance changes under the reversal of the current direction, can provide rich insights into the transport properties of spin-orbit coupled systems. However, UMR has never been observed in antiferromagnets before, given the absence of intrinsic spin-dependent scattering. Here, we report a UMR in the antiferromagnetic phase of a FeRh$|$Pt bilayer, which undergoes a sign change and then increases strongly with an increasing external magnetic field, in contrast to UMRs in ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic systems. We show that Rashba spin-orbit coupling alone cannot explain the sizable UMR in the antiferromagnetic bilayer and that field-induced spin canting distorts the Fermi contours to greatly enhance the UMR by two orders of magnitude. Our results can motivate the growing field of antiferromagnetic spintronics, and suggest a route to the development of tunable antiferromagnet-based spintronics devices.

arXiv comment18 pages, 14 figures (5 figures in main text, 9 figures in supplemental material)

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Unidirectional Spin Hall Magnetoresistance in Antiferromagnetic Heterostructures
• Quantum kinetic theory of quadratic responses
• Engineering axion insulator phase in superlattices with inversion symmetry breaking
• Nonreciprocal Ballistic Transport in Asymmetric Bands
• Proximity-induced nonlinear magnetoresistances on topological insulators
• Theory of nonlinear magnetoelectric transport effects in normal-metal $-$ magnetic-insulator heterostructures
• Nonreciprocal ballistic transport in multi-layer Weyl semimetal films with surface engineering
• Asymmetric magnetoresistance in 3$d$-5$d$ based La${}_{0.67}$Ca${}_{0.33}$MnO${}_3$/SrIrO${}_3$ bilayer: The role of unidirectional anisotropy