We show that the spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in alpha-MnTe impacts the transport behavior by generating an anisotropic valence-band splitting, resulting in four spin-polarized pockets near Gamma. A minimal k-dot-p model is constructed to capture this splitting by group theory analysis, a tight-binding model and ab initio calculations. The model is shown to describe the rotation symmetry of the zero-field planer Hall effect (PHE). The upper limit of the PHE percentage is shown to be fundamentally determined by the band shape, and is quantitatively estimated to be roughly 31% by first principles.
@article{arxiv.1805.12200,
title = {Planar Hall effect in antiferromagnetic MnTe thin films},
author = {Gen Yin and Jie-Xiang Yu and Yizhou Liu and Roger K. Lake and Jiadong Zang and Kang L. Wang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.12200},
year = {2019}
}