The Anomalous Hall Effect

Abstract

This article reviews the main contributions to the anomalous Hall effect and its resurgence in the past three decades, which has been accompanied by the rise of topological phenomena and topological materials. I will show that the anomalous Hall effect stems from the interplay of magnetism, spin-orbit coupling, disorder scattering and driving electric fields, it spans the classical, quantum and relativistic worlds, and has generated controversy for nearly one and a half centuries. It has become the smoking gun for detecting magnetic order and, extraordinarily, it continues to reveal new physics, with several novel varieties reported in the past decade.