Altermagnetism Induced Surface Chern Insulator.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41557964.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c05341.
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Abstract
We propose a new pathway to the quantized anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) by coupling an altermagnet to a topological crystalline insulator (TCI). The former gaps the topological surface states of the TCI, thereby realizing the QAHE in a robust and switchable platform with near-vanishing magnetization. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by studying a slab of the TCI SnTe coupled to an altermagnetic RuO<sub>2</sub> layer. Our first-principles calculations reveal that the <i>d</i>-wave altermagnetism in RuO<sub>2</sub> induces a 7 meV gap to the Dirac surface states on the (110) surface of SnTe, producing a finite anomalous Hall effect. Our approach generalizes to broader classes of altermagnetic materials and TCIs, thereby providing a family of topological altermagnetic heterostructures with small or vanishing magnetization that support nontrivial Chern numbers. Our results highlight a promising new topological platform with great tunability and applications to spintronics.