2025/03/11 by Run‐Wu Zhang, Zhang, Run-Wu, Chaoxi Cui +9 · 4 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Chemical and Physical Properties of Materials #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) #Topological Materials and Phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2503.10681
openalex publication_date 2025/03/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Due to spin-orbit coupling (SOC), crucial for the quantum spin Hall (QSH) effect, a quantized spin-Hall conductivity has not yet been reported in QSH insulators and other realistic materials. Here, we tackle this challenge by predicting robust quantized spin-Hall conductivity in monolayer Fe2Te2O. The underlying physics originates from the unrecognized mirror-spin coupling (MSC), which couples spin-up and spin-down states into two orthogonal mirror eigenstates. We show that the MSC can naturally emerge in the two-dimensional altermagnets with out-of-plane Néel vector and horizontal mirror. A remarkable consequence of the MSC is that it can dramatically weaken the spin hybridization of the altermagnetic materials when SOC is included. When SOC is neglected, Fe2Te2O is an altermagnetic Weyl semimetal with MSC. With SOC, it evolves into the first material candidate for magnetic mirror Chern insulator. Remarkably, under the protection of MSC, the spin hybridization of both bulk and topological edge states in Fe2Te2O with SOC at low energy is negligible. As a consequence, a quantized spin-Hall conductivity emerges within the bulk band gap of the system. By unveiling a novel effect, our findings represent a significant advancement in spin Hall transport, and broaden the material candidates hosting intriguing altermagnetic phenomena.