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arXiv · 2601.02913

Strain Engineering of Intrinsic Anomalous Hall and Nernst Effects in Altermagnetic MnTe at Realistic Doping Levels

Abstract

Hexagonal MnTe has emerged as a prototypical g-wave altermagnet, hosting time-reversal symmetry breaking in momentum space despite a vanishing net magnetization. While this symmetry breaking theoretically allows for an intrinsic anomalous Hall effect, experimentally observed signals have remained weak. In this work, we investigate the origin of this suppression and demonstrate a strategy to amplify anomalous transport responses within the experimentally accessible doping regime. Using a $\bm{k}\cdot\bm{p}$ effective model, we reveal that near the valence band maximum, which corresponds to the energy window relevant for typical hole doping ($\sim10^{19}cm^{-3}$), the intrinsic Hall effect is suppressed due to a symmetry-enforced cancellation of opposing Berry curvature contributions. We propose that breaking the crystalline symmetry via volume-conserving biaxial strain lifts this cancellation, resulting in a significant enhancement of the anomalous Hall conductivity by orders of magnitude. This strain-induced Fermi surface distortion also amplifies the anomalous Nernst effect. Furthermore, the analysis of the spin texture confirms that these strain-enabled anomalous transport signatures emerge while preserving the zero net magnetization.

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Weiwei Chen, Ziyu Zhou, Jie Meng, Weiyi Wang, Ye Yang, Zhongjun Li. 2026-01-06. Strain Engineering of Intrinsic Anomalous Hall and Nernst Effects in Altermagnetic MnTe at Realistic Doping Levels. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02913

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