Magnetic field-induced nontrivial spin chirality and large topological Hall effect in kagome magnet ScMn6Sn6

Abstract

RMn6Sn6 (R = rare earth element) kagome magnets have attracted much attention owing to their potential for realizing the emerging topological properties in both reciprocal and real spaces. One of the RMn6Sn6 members, ScMn6Sn6, is predicted to possess room temperature-stabilized chiral spin textures arising from frustrated exchange interactions, but further experimental evidence has not been well established yet. In this work, we fabricate high-quality ScMn6Sn6 single crystals and systematically study their magnetoelectric transport properties. A large topological Hall effect is observed within the temperature range from 100 to 320 K with the magnetic field applied along the parallel direction of the kagome plane. This observation suggests that the spin textures in ScMn6Sn6 have a nonzero scalar spin chirality over a wide temperature range. Our results identify ScMn6Sn6 as a promising member of the rare earth element kagome magnets that hosts chiral spin textures at room temperature.