Spin Hall Magnetoresistance in Antiferromagnetic Insulators
Abstract
Antiferromagnetic materials promise improved performance for spintronic applications, as they are robust against external magnetic field perturbations and allow for faster magnetization dynamics compared to ferromagnets. The direct observation of the antiferromagnetic state, however, is challenging due to the absence of a macroscopic magnetization. We show that the spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR) is a versatile tool to probe the antiferromagnetic spin structure via simple electrical transport experiments by investigating the easy-plane antiferromagnetic insulators alpha-Fe2O3 (hematite) and NiO in bilayer heterostructures with a Pt heavy-metal top electrode. While rotating an external magnetic field in three orthogonal planes, we record the longitudinal and the transverse resistivities of Pt and observe characteristic resistivity modulations consistent with the SMR effect. We analyze both their amplitude and phase and compare the data to the results from a prototypical collinear ferrimagnetic Y3Fe5O12/Pt bilayer. The observed magnetic field dependence is explained in a comprehensive model, based on two magnetic sublattices and taking into account magnetic field-induced modifications of the domain structure. Our results show that the SMR effect allows to readout the spin configuration and to investigate magnetoelastic effects in antiferromagnetic multi-domain materials. We demonstrate that the SMR amplitude scales with the sum of the absolute sublattice magnetizations in ferrimagnetic and antiferromagnetic materials. In alpha-Fe2O3/Pt bilayers, we find an unexpectedly large SMR amplitude of 2.5E-3, twice as high as for prototype Y3Fe5O12/Pt bilayers, making the system particularly interesting for room-temperature antiferromagnetic spintronic applications.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{geprags2026spin,
title = {{Spin Hall Magnetoresistance in Antiferromagnetic Insulators}},
author = {Stephan Geprägs and Matthias Opel and Johanna Fischer and Philipp Schwenke and Matthias Althammer and Hans Huebl and Rudolf Gross},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.02632},
eprint = {2609.02632},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02632},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Spin Hall Magnetoresistance in Antiferromagnetic Insulators
AU - Stephan Geprägs
AU - Matthias Opel
AU - Johanna Fischer
AU - Philipp Schwenke
AU - Matthias Althammer
AU - Hans Huebl
AU - Rudolf Gross
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.02632
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02632
AB - Antiferromagnetic materials promise improved performance for spintronic applications, as they are robust against external magnetic field perturbations and allow for faster magnetization dynamics compared to ferromagnets. The direct observation of the antiferromagnetic state, however, is challenging due to the absence of a macroscopic magnetization. We show that the spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR) is a versatile tool to probe the antiferromagnetic spin structure via simple electrical transport experiments by investigating the easy-plane antiferromagnetic insulators alpha-Fe2O3 (hematite) and NiO in bilayer heterostructures with a Pt heavy-metal top electrode. While rotating an external magnetic field in three orthogonal planes, we record the longitudinal and the transverse resistivities of Pt and observe characteristic resistivity modulations consistent with the SMR effect. We analyze both their amplitude and phase and compare the data to the results from a prototypical collinear ferrimagnetic Y3Fe5O12/Pt bilayer. The observed magnetic field dependence is explained in a comprehensive model, based on two magnetic sublattices and taking into account magnetic field-induced modifications of the domain structure. Our results show that the SMR effect allows to readout the spin configuration and to investigate magnetoelastic effects in antiferromagnetic multi-domain materials. We demonstrate that the SMR amplitude scales with the sum of the absolute sublattice magnetizations in ferrimagnetic and antiferromagnetic materials. In alpha-Fe2O3/Pt bilayers, we find an unexpectedly large SMR amplitude of 2.5E-3, twice as high as for prototype Y3Fe5O12/Pt bilayers, making the system particularly interesting for room-temperature antiferromagnetic spintronic applications.
ER -