Anomalous Hall Effect due to Non-collinearily in Pyrochlore Compounds: Role of Orbital Aharonov-Bohm Effect
To elucidate the origin of spin structure-driven anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in pyrochlore compounds, we construct the $t_{2g}$-orbital kagome lattice model and analyze the anomalous Hall conductivity (AHC). We reveal that a conduction electron acquires a Berry phase due to the complex d-orbital wavefunction in the presence of spin-orbit interaction. This ``orbital Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect'' produces the AHC that is drastically changed in the presence of non-collinear spin structure. In both ferromagnetic compound Nd$_2$Mo$_2$O$_7$ and paramagnetic compound Pr$_2$Ir$_2$O$_7$, the AHC given by the orbital AB effect totally dominates the spin chirality mechanism, and succeeds in explaining the experimental relation between the spin structure and the AHC. Especially, ``finite AHC in the absence of magnetization'' observed in Pr$_2$Ir$_2$O$_7$ can be explained in terms of the orbital mechanism by assuming small magnetic order of Ir 5d-electrons.