Quantized Anomalous Hall Effect in Magnetic Topological Insulators

Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect In addition to the Hall effect, which appears as a voltage change in conductors in response to an external magnetic field, ferromagnets exhibit the anomalous Hall effect, which is often proportional to their magnetization and independent of the presence of the magnetic field. This effect, first observed more than a century ago, has not been realized in its quantized form. Yu et al. (p. 61 , published online 3 June) propose a realization of a quantum anomalous Hall system by magnetically doping thin films of three-dimensional topological insulators and calculate the effects of various dopants and film thicknesses. The resulting insulators are predicted to have long-range ferromagnetic order, potentially joining dilute magnetic semiconductors as candidates for spintronic applications.