Mesoscopic Hall effect driven by chiral spin order

Abstract

A Hall effect due to spin chirality in mesoscopic systems is predicted. We consider a 4-terminal Hall system including local spins with geometry of a vortex domain wall, where strong spin chirality appears near the center of vortex. The Fermi energy of the conduction electrons is assumed to be comparable to the exchange coupling energy where the adiabatic approximation ceases to be valid. Our results show a Hall effect where a voltage drop and a spin current arise in the transverse direction. The similarity between this Hall effect and the conventional spin Hall effect in systems with spin-orbit interaction is pointed out.