Optical anomalous Hall effect enhanced by flat bands in ferromagnetic van der Waals semimetal

Abstract

Geometrical aspects of electronic states in condensed matter have led to the experimental realization of enhanced electromagnetic phenomena, as exemplified by the giant anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in topological semimetals. However, the guideline to the large AHE is still immature due to lack of profound understanding of the sources of the Berry curvature in actual electronic structures; the main focus has concentrated only on the band crossings near the Fermi level. Here, we show that the band crossings and flat bands cooperatively produce the large intrinsic AHE in ferromagnetic nodal line semimetal candidate Fe3GeTe2. The terahertz and infrared magneto-optical spectroscopy reveals that two explicit resonance structures in the optical Hall conductivity spectra σxy(ω) are closely related to the AHE. The first-principles calculation suggests that both the flat bands having large density of states (DOS) and the band crossings near the Fermi level are the main causes of these Hall resonances. Our findings unveil a mechanism to enhance the AHE based on the flat bands, which gives insights into the topological material design.