Engineering the in-plane anomalous Hall effect in <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msub><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">Cd</mml:mi><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml:msub><mml:msub><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">As</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msub></mml:math> thin films

Abstract

We predict two topological phase transitions for cadmium arsenide $({\mathrm{Cd}}_{3}{\mathrm{As}}_{2})$ thin films under in-plane magnetic field, taking advantage of a four-band $k\ifmmode\cdot\else\textperiodcentered\fi{}p$ model and effective $g$ factors calculated from first principles. Film thickness, growth direction, and in-plane Zeeman coupling strength can all serve as control parameters to drive these phase transitions. For (001) oriented ${\mathrm{Cd}}_{3}{\mathrm{As}}_{2}$ thin films, a two dimensional Weyl semimetal phase protected by ${C}_{2z}\mathcal{T}$ symmetry can be realized using an in-plane magnetic field, which has recently been reported in our companion paper [B. Guo, W. Miao, V. Huang, A. C. Lygo, X. Dai, and S. Stemmer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 046601 (2023)]. We then put forth two pathways to achieve quantized in-plane anomalous Hall effects. By either introducing a trigonal warping term or altering the growth orientation, the emergent ${C}_{2z}\mathcal{T}$ symmetry can be broken. Consequently, in the clean limit and at low temperatures, quantized Hall plateaus induced by in-plane Zeeman fields become observable.

Topics & Concepts