Non-topological Origin of the Planar Hall Effect in Type-II Dirac Semimetal NiTe2

Abstract: Dirac and Weyl semimetals are new discovered topological nontrivial materials with the linear band dispersions around the Dirac/Weyl points. When applying non-orthogonal electric current and magnetic field, an exotic phenomenon called chiral anomaly arises and negative longitudinal resistance can be detected. Recently, a new phenomenon named planer Hall effect (PHE) is considered to be another indication of chiral anomaly which has been observed in many topological semimetals. However, it still remains a question that is the PHE only attributed to chiral anomaly? Here we demonstrate the PHE in a new-discovered type-II Dirac semimetal NiTe2 by low temperature transport. However, after detailed analysis, we conclude that the PHE results from the trivial orbital magnetoresistance. This work reveals that PHE is not a sufficient condition of chiral anomaly and one need to take special care of other non-topological contribution in such studies.