Orbital Hall conductivity and orbital diffusion length of Vanadium thin films by Hanle magnetoresistance
In spintronics, the spin Hall effect has been widely used to generate and detect spin currents in materials with strong spin-orbit coupling such as Pt and Ta. Recently, its orbital counterpart has drawn attention as a new tool to generate and detect orbital currents and thus investigate orbital transport parameters. In this study, we investigate vanadium (V), a $3d$ transition metal with weak spin-orbit coupling but with a theoretically large orbital Hall conductivity. We measure a large Hanle magnetoresistance in V thin films with a magnitude comparable to that of heavy metals and at least one order of magnitude higher than the spin Hall magnetoresistance observed in a Y$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$/V bilayer, pointing to the orbital Hall origin of the effect. A fit of the magnetic-field dependence and thickness dependence of the Hanle magnetoresistance to the standard diffusion model allows us to quantify the orbital diffusion length (~2 nm) and the orbital Hall conductivity (~78 ($\hbar/2e$) $Ω^{-1}$cm$^{-1}$) of V. The obtained orbital Hall conductivity is two orders of magnitude smaller than theoretical calculations of the intrinsic value, suggesting there is an important role of disorder.