For the first time, researchers in Japan have detected a giant anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in a material that is not magnetic. The breakthrough was made using high-quality thin films of Cd3As2, a Dirac semimetal, subjected to an in-plane magnetic field.
By carefully tuning the electronic band structure of the material, the team was able to separate the AHE signal and determine that its source lies in orbital magnetization rather than electron spin, overturning long-standing assumptions in condensed matter physics.
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