Control of chiral orbital currents in a colossal magnetoresistance material

Abstract

Colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) is an extraordinary enhancement of the electric conductivity in the presence of a magnetic field. It is conventionally associated with a field-induced spin polarization, which drastically reduces spin scattering and thus electric resistance. However, ferrimagnetic Mn3Si2Te6 is an intriguing exception to this rule: it exhibits a 7-order-of-magnitude reduction in ab-plane resistivity with a 13-Tesla anisotropy field which occur only when a magnetic polarization is avoided [1]. Here we report an exotic quantum state that is driven by ab-plane chiral orbital currents (COC) flowing along edges of MnTe6 octahedra. The c-axis orbital moments of ab-plane COC couple to the ferrimagnetic Mn spins to drastically increase the ab-plane conductivity (CMR) when an external magnetic field is aligned along the magnetic hard c-axis. Both the COC state and its CMR are extraordinarily susceptible to small DC currents exceeding a critical threshold, and a hallmark of this COC state is an exotic time-dependent, bistable switching mimicking a first-order melting transition. The control of the COC-enabled CMR and bistable switching offers a fundamentally new paradigm for quantum technologies.

5 figures. The final version of this paper, which is more updated than this version, is to be published in Nature

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Cited by in corpus (21)

• Magnetic Structure and Spin Fluctuations in Colossal Magnetoresistance Ferrimagnet Mn3Si2Te6
• Electronic structure, magnetic properties, spin orientation, and doping effect in Mn${}_3$Si${}_2$Te${}_6$
• Anomalous Nernst effect in a ferrimagnetic nodal-line semiconductor Mn${}_3$Si${}_2$Te${}_6$
• Signatures of a surface spin-orbital chiral metal
• Search for orbital magnetism in the kagome superconductor $\mathrm{Cs}{\mathrm{V}}_3\mathrm{S}{\mathrm{b}}_5$ using neutron diffraction
• Current-sensitive Hall effect in a chiral-orbital-current state
• Anapole, chiral and orbital states in Mn3Si2Te6
• Electrically tunable, rapid spin-orbit torque induced modulation of colossal magnetoresistance in Mn${}_3$Si${}_2$Te${}_6$ nanoflakes
• Switchable in-plane anomalous Hall effect by magnetization orientation in monolayer ${\mathrm{Mn}}_3{\mathrm{Si}}_2{\mathrm{Te}}_6$
• Gap and magnetic engineering via doping and pressure in tuning the colossal magnetoresistance in (Mn${}_{1-x}$Mg${}_x$)${}_3$Si${}_2$Te${}_6$
• Pump-induced terahertz conductivity response and peculiar bound state in Mn3Si2Te6
• Impact of Thermal Effects on the Current-Tunable Electrical Transport in the Ferrimagnetic Semiconductor Mn${}_3$Si${}_2$Te${}_6$
• Odd-parity altermagnetism through sublattice currents: From Haldane-Hubbard model to general bipartite lattices
• Nonequilibrium carrier and phonon dynamics in the ferrimagnetic semiconductor Mn${}_3$Si${}_2$Te${}_6$
• Loop-current order through the kagome looking glass
• Orbital current signature using neutron diffraction
• Coherent Spin-Phonon Coupling in the Layered Ferrimagnet Mn3Si2Te6
• Inductance Meets Memory in the Quantum Magnet Mn3Si2Te6
• Magnetic resonance and microwave resistance modulation in van der Waals colossal-magnetoresistance material
• Origin of pressure-induced anomalies in the nodal-line ferrimagnet Mn${}_3$Si${}_2$Te${}_6$
• Emergent Inductance from Chiral Orbital Currents in a Bulk Ferrimagnet