Unconventional temperature dependence of the anomalous Hall effect in HgCr2Se4

Abstract

At sufficiently low temperatures, many quantum effects, such as weak localization, electron-electron interaction (EEI), and Kondo screening, can lead to pronounced corrections to the semiclassical electron transport. Although low temperature corrections to longitudinal resistivity, ordinary Hall resistivity, or anomalous Hall resistivity are often observed, the corrections to three of them have never been simultaneously detected in a single sample. Here, we report on the observation of $\sqrt T$-type temperature dependences of the longitudinal, ordinary Hall and AH resistivities at temperatures down to at least 20 mK in $n$-type HgCr$_2$Se$_4$, a half-metallic ferromagnetic semiconductor that can reach extremely low carrier densities. For the samples with moderate disorder, the longitudinal and ordinary Hall conductivities can be satisfactorily described by the EEI theory developed by Altshuler \textit{et al.}, whereas the large corrections to AH conductivity are inconsistent with the existing theory, which predicts vanishing and finite corrections to AH conductivity for EEI and weak localization, respectively.