Orbital Magnetization as the Origin of the Nonlinear Hall Effect and Its Implications

Abstract: The nonlinear Hall effect is a new type of Hall effect that has recently attracted significant attention. For the physical origin of the nonlinear Hall effect, while orbital magnetization has long been hypothesized to underpin the nonlinear Hall effect, quantitative connections between the two remain elusive. Here, we resolve the problem by deriving the first explicit formula connecting the electric field induced orbital magnetization to the second order nonlinear Hall conductivity. Our theory reveals that the applied electric field plays dual roles in generating the nonlinear Hall effect: it first generates nonequlibrium orbital magnetization and subsequently perturbs the circulating edge states to produce transverse Hall voltage. Based on this scenario, we point out that in isotropic chiral metals of T and O point groups, although the nonlinear Hall response of a monochromatic linear polarized electric field is forced to vanish due to the crystalline symmetry, applying a non-collinear bichromatic electric field can give rise to a nonvanishing nonlinear Hall current that directly manifests the chiral correlation of the applied electric field. This discovery in isotropic chiral crystals enables us to incoporate both the nonlinear Hall effect and the circulat photo-galvanic effect into the framework of orbital magnetization.