Giant spontaneous Kerr effect and its self-doping dependence in altermagnetic MnTe

[2604.21021] Giant spontaneous Kerr effect and its self-doping dependence in altermagnetic MnTe Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Search arXiv Press Enter to search · Advanced search Condensed Matter > Strongly Correlated Electrons arXiv:2604.21021 (cond-mat) [Submitted on 22 Apr 2026 ( v1 ), last revised 15 Aug 2026 (this version, v3)] Title: Giant spontaneous Kerr effect and its self-doping dependence in altermagnetic MnTe Authors: Weitung Yang , Choongjae Won , Cory Cress , Weihang Lu , Xiaochen Fang , Shelby Fields , Nicholas Combs , Shaofeng Han , Marshall Zachary Franklin , Steven P. Bennett , Sang-Wook Cheong , Jing Xia View a PDF of the paper titled Giant spontaneous Kerr effect and its self-doping dependence in altermagnetic MnTe, by Weitung Yang and 11 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Altermagnetism, a third class of collinear magnetism with spin-split bands and vanishing net magnetization, has emerged in hexagonal {\alpha}-MnTe, a promising platform for ultrafast, stray-field-free spintronics. Whether MnTe's macroscopic symmetry-breaking signatures reflect ideal altermagnetic order or are activated by defects remains open. Here we report giant spontaneous Kerr rotations of up to 1500 rad in {\alpha}-MnTe single crystals at the telecommunication wavelength of 1550 nm, onsetting precisely at the Néel temperature TN = 307 K. The signal appears in disjoint macroscopic patches whose amplitude tracks the sample conductivity, and a hole-conducting {\alpha}-MnTe film reproduces this response together with an anomalous Hall effect. Within a single crystal, Kerr-active regions are optically distinct from their Kerr-silent surroundings in co-registered reflection maps. These observations indicate that carrier self-doping, rather than ideal altermagnetic order alone, governs the giant magneto-optical response, and establish telecom-wavelength Kerr imaging as a practical readout for altermagnetic spintronics. Comments: revision Subjects: Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) ; Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci); Optics (physics.optics) Cite as: arXiv:2604.21021 [cond-mat.str-el] (or arXiv:2604.21021v3 [cond-mat.str-el] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.21021 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Jing Xia Mr. [ view email ] [v1] Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:09:44 UTC (7,161 KB) [v2] Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:59:39 UTC (7,006 KB) [v3] Sat, 15 Aug 2026 11:25:49 UTC (14,585 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Giant spontaneous Kerr effect and its self-doping dependence in altermagnetic MnTe, by Weitung Yang and 11 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: cond-mat.str-el < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.mtrl-sci physics physics.optics References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... 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