Nonlinear planar Hall effect*

An intriguing property of a three-dimensional (3D) topological insulator is the existence of surface states with spin-momentum locking, which offers a new frontier of exploration in spintronics. Here, we report the observation of a new type of Hall effect in a 3D topological insulator Bi₂Se₃ film. The Hall resistance scales linearly with both the applied electric and magnetic fields and exhibits a π/2 angle offset with respect to its longitudinal counterpart, in contrast to the usual angle offset of π/4 between the linear planar Hall effect and the anisotropic magnetoresistance. This novel nonlinear planar Hall effect originates from the conversion of a nonlinear transverse spin current to a charge current due to the concerted actions of spin-momentum locking and time-reversal symmetry breaking, which also exists in a wide class of non-centrosymmetric materials with a large span of magnitudes. This provides a new way to characterize and utilize the nonlinear spin-to-charge conversion in a variety of topological quantum materials.