Controllable anomalous Hall effect in topological Dirac semimetals with ferromagnetic electrodes*

The Hall effect is a fundamental transport phenomenon and essential for spintronics devices, such as magnetic sensors and magnetic memories. Now the Hall effect is attracting a renewed interest since a giant anomalous Hall effect is observed in magnetic Weyl semimetals such as Co₃Sn₂S₂.

In this work, we propose a large Hall effect can be realized in nonmagnetic topological Dirac semimetals with ferromagnetic electrodes. The effect originates from the helical surface states of topological Dirac semimetals and time-reversal breaking due to the magnetization in electrodes. Our results provides a simple way to control the anomalous Hall transport continuously and reversibly by tuning the magnetization of the electrodes instead of carefully modifying the topological material itself. We show the robustness of the effect and discuss a possible application to topological Dirac memristors.