Nodal-line symmetry breaking induced colossal anomalous Hall and Nernst effects in Cu2CoSn Heusler compound

Abstract

The presence of topological band crossings near the Fermi energy is essential for the realization of large anomalous transport properties in the materials. The topological semimetals host such properties owing to their unique topological band structure, such as Weyl points or nodal lines (NLs), those are protected by certain symmetries of the crystal. When the NLs break out in the system, a large Berry curvature arises in the surrounding area of the gapped NL. In the present work, we studied anomalous transport properties of Cu2CoSn compound, which has a cubic Heusler crystal structure (space group: Fm3¯m). Cu2CoSn full Heusler compound possesses NLs at the Fermi level that is protected by mirror reflection symmetries of the lattice. Upon introducing the spin–orbit coupling in the Hamiltonian and by setting the magnetization axis along the [001] direction, we found that the NLs are gapped out and large Berry curvature arises in the system. The integral of Berry curvature gives the intrinsic anomalous Hall conductivity (AHC) about 1003 S/cm and the anomalous Nernst conductivity (ANC) about 3.98 A/m K at the Fermi level. These values of AHC and ANC are comparable to the largest reported values for the Co2MnGa Heusler compound. Therefore, Cu2CoSn becomes a newborn member of the family of full Heusler compounds, which possesses giant AHC and ANC that can be useful for the spintronics application.