Magnetoresistance driven by the magnetic Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition

Abstract

While the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition (BKT) has been under intense scrutiny for decades, unambiguous experimental signatures in magnetic systems remain elusive. Here, we investigate the interplay between electronic and magnetic degrees of freedom near the BKT transition. Focusing on a metal with easy-plane ferromagnetic order, we establish a framework that accounts both for the coupling between the charge current and the flow of topological magnetic defects and for electron scattering on their inhomogeneous spin texture. We show that electron scattering is responsible for a temperature-dependent magnetoresistance effect scaling as the density of the topological defects, which is expected to increase dramatically above the BKT transition temperature. Our findings call for further experimental investigations.