Orbital magnetization from interface reflections in a conductor with charge current

Abstract

We propose that a high-quality flat interface or boundary can serve as a long-range skew scatterer for charged quasiparticles in a metal. When an electric current flows parallel to the interface, the balance between clockwise and counterclockwise reflections is disrupted, leading to a net orbital magnetization. This magnetization is maximized at the interface and varies linearly in the direction perpendicular to it. We suggest that this effect can be detected using spatially resolved Kerr effect measurements at distances up to the electron phase coherence length from the interface. Unlike the orbital Hall and orbital Edelstein effects, the proposed phenomenon does not require inversion symmetry breaking in the bulk of the sample and is unrelated to Hall effect physics.