Nonlinear Hall Effect in Antiferromagnetic Half-Heusler MaterialsSupported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11834006, 12074181, and 11674165), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BK20200007), the Fok Ying-Tong Education Foundation of China (Grant No. 161006), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 020414380149).

Abstract

It has recently been demonstrated that various topological states, including Dirac, Weyl, nodal-line, and triple-point semimetal phases, can emerge in antiferromagnetic (AFM) half-Heusler compounds. However, how to determine the AFM structure and to distinguish different topological phases from transport behaviors remains unknown. We show that, due to the presence of combined time-reversal and fractional translation symmetry, the recently proposed second-order nonlinear Hall effect can be used to characterize different topological phases with various AFM configurations. Guided by the symmetry analysis, we obtain expressions of the Berry curvature dipole for different AFM configurations. Based on the effective model, we explicitly calculate the Berry curvature dipole, which is found to be vanishingly small for the triple-point semimetal phase, and large in the Weyl semimetal phase. Our results not only put forward an effective method for the identification of magnetic orders and topological phases in AFM half-Heusler materials, but also suggest these materials as a versatile platform for engineering the nonlinear Hall effect.