Hump-like structure in Hall signal from ultra-thin SrRuO3 films without inhomogeneous anomalous Hall effect

Abstract

A controversy arose over the interpretation of the recently observed hump features in Hall resistivity ρxy from ultra-thin SrRuO3 (SRO) film; it was initially interpreted to be due to topological Hall effect but was later proposed to be from existence of regions with different anomalous Hall effect (AHE). In order to settle down the issue, we performed Hall effect as well as magneto-optic Kerr-effect measurements on 4 unit cell SRO films. Clear hump features are observed in ρxy, whereas neither hump feature nor double hysteresis loop is seen in the Kerr rotation which should be proportional to the magnetization. In addition, magnetization measurement by superconducting quantum interference device shows no sign of multiple coercive fields. These results show that inhomogeneous AHE alone cannot explain the observed hump behavior in ρxy data. We suggest that emergence of the hump structure in ρxy is closely related to the growth condition.