Lyalin I, Alikhah S, Berritta M, Oppeneer PM, Kawakami RK. Magneto-Optical Detection of the Orbital Hall Effect in Chromium.
Phys Rev Lett 2023;
131:156702. [PMID:
37897779 DOI:
10.1103/physrevlett.131.156702]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2023] [Accepted: 09/07/2023] [Indexed: 10/30/2023]
Abstract
The orbital Hall effect has been theoretically predicted but its direct observation is a challenge. Here, we report the magneto-optical detection of current-induced orbital accumulation at the surface of a light 3d transition metal, Cr. The orbital polarization is in-plane, transverse to the current direction, and scales linearly with current density, consistent with the orbital Hall effect. Comparing the thickness-dependent magneto-optical measurements with ab initio calculations, we estimate an orbital diffusion length in Cr of 6.6±0.6 nm.
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