Dominance of the orbital Hall effect over spin in transition metal heterostructures

The orbital Hall effect has emerged as a key phenomenon in solid-state physics, revealing orbital transport as a counterpart to spin transport in spintronics. In this work, spin and orbital Hall effects were disentangled across 19 transition metals. The results show that orbital-to-charge conversion often dominates spin, consistent with first-principles predictions. These findings underscore the fundamental role of orbital transport and establish orbitronics as a promising frontier in condensed matter physics.