Anomalous planar Hall effect in a kagome ferromagnet

Abstract: The macroscopic signature for Weyl nodes so far has been the negative longitudinal magnetoresistance arising from the chiral anomaly. However, negative longitudinal magnetoresistance is not unique to chiral anomaly and can arise due to completely different mechanisms such as current jetting or in ferromagnetic systems due to the suppression of scattering with magnons. Therefore, a macroscopic effect that can be uniquely attributed to the presence of Weyl nodes is desirable. Here we show that the planar Hall effect could be a hallmark for Weyl nodes. We investigated the anisotropic magnetoresistance and planar Hall effect in Fe$_3$Sn$_2$, which has a kagome lattice and has been predicted to be a type II Weyl metal. We discover that the planar Hall effect contains a field antisymmetric contribution in addition to the ordinary field symmetric contribution. The field antisymmetric planar Hall effect has a 3-fold rotational symmetry, distinctively different from the symmetric planar Hall effect, but consistent with the 3-fold rotational degeneracy of the magnetization in Fe$_3$Sn$_2$. The temperature and field dependence of the antisymmetric planar Hall effect rules out an interpretation based on contribution from the anomalous Hall effect and is different from the symmetric planar Hall effect, pointing to a different origin. We attribute the antisymmetric planar Hall effect to the topological nature of Fe$_3$Sn$_2$ due to the presence of Weyl II nodes. Our finding offers a promising route for macroscopically probing Weyl systems.