A Chiral Superlattice Route to Spin-Split Topological Antiferromagnetism

Abstract

The interplay between chirality and magnetism is a profound topic, spanning particle physics, condensed matter, chemistry and origin of life. In this paper, we study this interplay in the new antiferromagnet (AFM) UOTe, and we report a chiral superlattice route to spin-split topological phenomena from collinear antiferromagnetism. Pristine UOTe is a collinear AFM without Berry curvature or spin-split bands. However, we identify the spontaneous formation of a chiral superlattice in UOTe, which can be viewed as frozen chiral phonons at finite wave vector. When electrons move through the chiral superlattice, their orbital Bloch wavefunction and quantum geometry are modulated by the strong chiral superlattice potential, generating large Berry curvature in the chiral superlattice, which we detect by the nonlinear Hall effect. At 150 K, the chiral superlattice induced Berry curvature couples to the collinear AFM order, generating a giant anomalous Hall angle ~0.14 abruptly near $T_N$ that is among the largest in bulk magnets. Moreover, our spin Hanle precession measurement shows that the chiral superlattice also generates spin-polarized current from the collinear AFM, a long-standing goal in spintronics. We shed light on the supermodulation formation mechanism based on chemical ion size and physical interlayer-intralayer energy competitions, using which we propose a design principle to discover similar bond-mismatch superlattices, providing a chiral superlattice pathway through real space engineering of quantum geometry.