Pancharatnam-Berry phase and kinetic magnetoelectric effect in trigonal tellurium

Abstract

We study the kinetic magnetoelectric effect (current-induced magnetization including both the orbital and spin contributions) in three-dimensional conductors, specializing to the case of p-doped trigonal tellurium. We include both intrinsic and extrinsic contributions to the effect, which stem from the band structure of the crystal, and from disorder scattering, respectively. Specifically, we determine the dependence of the kinetic magnetoelectric response on the hole doping in tellurium, and show that the intrinsic and extrinsic effects dominate for low and high levels of doping, respectively. The results of this work imply that three-dimensional helical metals are promising for spintronics applications, in particular, they can provide robust control over current-induced magnetic torques.