2025/04/11 by T. Farajollahpour, Farajollahpour, T., R. Ganesh +3 · 4 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #2D Materials and Applications #FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Topological Materials and Phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.08882
openalex publication_date 2025/04/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Altermagnetism has been detected in several materials using spin-sensitive probes. These measurements require rather complex setups that make it challenging to track variations in altermagnetic order, e.g., to identify a temperature-tuned altermagnetic phase transition. We propose a simple transport measurement that can probe the order parameter for d-wave altermagnetism. We suggest magnetoconductivity anisotropy -- the difference between the two principal values of the magnetoconductivity tensor. This quantity can be easily measured as a function of temperature, without any spin-selective apparatus. It acquires a nonzero value in a C4K phase, where C4 rotations and time reversal K are not symmetries but their combination is. This effect can be traced to the modification of phase space density due to Berry curvature, which we demonstrate using semiclassical equations of motion for band electrons. As an illustration, we build a minimal tight-binding model with altermagnetic order that breaks C4 and K symmetries while preserving C4K.