Piezospintronic effect in antiperovskite Mn$_3$GaN

Abstract

Based on first-principles calculations, we investigated the topological transport properties of Mn$_3$GaN with coplanar noncollinear magnetic structures. The intrinsic anomalous Hall conductivity (IAHC) displays a significant dependence with respect to the in-plane magnetization direction between the $\Gamma_{5g}$ and $\Gamma_{4g}$ magnetic configurations, where large anomalous Nernst effect (ANE) can be induced by tailoring the magnetization direction. Moreover, we observed strong piezospintronic effect in Mn$_3$GaN, where large IAHC can be induced by moderate epitaxial strain. Symmetry analysis reveals that for both cases, the nonzero IAHC is originated from the spin-orbit coupling instead of the noncollinear magnetic configurations