Exploring hidden effects that have been overlooked given the nominal global crystal symmetry but are indeed visible in solid-state materials has been a fascinating subject of research recently. Here, we introduce a novel hidden Zeeman-type spin polarization (HZSP) in nonmagnetic bulk crystals with sublattice structures. In the momentum space of these crystals, the doubly degenerate bands formed in a certain plane can exhibit a uniform spin configuration with opposite spin orientations perpendicular to this plane, whereas such degenerate states are spatially separated in a pair of real-space sectors. Interestingly, we find that HZSP can manifest itself in both centrosymmetric and non-centrosymmetric materials. We further demonstrate the important role of nonsymmorphic twofold screw-rotational symmetry played in the formation of HZSP. Moreover, two representative material examples, i.e., centrosymmetric WSe2 and noncentrosymmetric BaBi4O7, are identified to show HZSP via first-principles calculations. Our finding thus not only opens new perspectives for hidden spin polarization research but also significantly broadens the range of materials towards spintronics applications.
@article{arxiv.2103.13035,
title = {Hidden Zeeman-type spin polarization in bulk crystals},
author = {Shan Guan and Jun-Wei Luo and Shu-Shen Li and Alex Zunger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.13035},
year = {2023}
}