The rise of spin-flip transitions in the anomalous Hall effect of FePt alloy

Hongbin Zhang, Frank Freimuth, Stefan Blugel, Ivo Souza, Yuriy Mokrousov

Published 2010-09-16Version 1

We carry out first-principles calculations which demonstrate the importance of spin-flip transitions for the intrinsic anomalous Hall conductivity of ordered FePt alloys. We show the such transitions get enhanced by large spin-orbit coupling of Pt atoms, becoming negligible when Pt is replaced by lighter isoelectronic Pd. We find that spin-flip transitions in FePt originate not only from conventional band anticrossings at the Fermi level, but also from transitions between well-separated pairs of bands with similar dispersions. We also predict a strong anisotropy in the anomalous Hall conductivity of FePt, which comes from spin-flip transitions entirely, and investigate the influence of disorder on it.