Abstract

Spin-orbit driven Hall type effects, e.g. spin (SHE) and anomalous Hall effect (AHE), have been under intensive research over the past decade. The growing interest into these effects is partially due to the technological significance of the SHE effect in the area of magnetic random access memory (MRAM). In the wake of this technological interest into the SHE , the AHE regained interest because it shares the same driving mechanism but is much easier accessible experimentally.

In this talk I will introduce the basic concepts for spin-orbit driven transport phenomena involving the Berry curvature of Bloch electrons and the scattering at lattice imperfections. Furthermore, I give a brief introduction to the technological aspects of the ongoing research with spin-orbit induced torques as the main ingredients of MRAM devices.

Finally, I will present our contributions to the field with material dependent transport calculations on all mechanisms which lead to a much deeper understanding of the underlying physics especially how to enhance the effect with appropriate material design. Ultimately, since the existence of transport phenomena is intertwined with the symmetry of the underlying system charge and spin Hall probes can be exploited to probe novel states of matter.