Magnetotransport in Topological Materials and Nonlinear Hall Effect via First-Principles Electronic Interactions and Band Topology

Abstract: Topological effects arising from the Berry curvature lead to intriguing transport signatures in quantum materials. Two such phenomena are the chiral anomaly and nonlinear Hall effect (NLHE). A unified description of these transport regimes requires a quantitative treatment of both band topology and electron scattering. Here, we show accurate predictions of the magnetoresistance in topological semimetals and NLHE in noncentrosymmetric materials by solving the Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) with electron-phonon ($e$-ph) scattering and Berry curvature computed from first principles. We apply our method to study magnetotransport in a prototypical Weyl semimetal, TaAs, and the NLHE in strained monolayer WSe$_2$, bilayer WTe$_2$ and bulk BaMnSb$_2$. In TaAs, we find a chiral contribution to the magnetoconductance which is positive and increases with magnetic field, consistent with experiments. We show that $e$-ph interactions can significantly modify the Berry curvature dipole and its dependence on temperature and Fermi level, highlighting the interplay of band topology and electronic interactions in nonlinear transport. The computed nonlinear Hall response in BaMnSb$_2$ is in agreement with experiments. By adding the Berry curvature to first-principles transport calculations, our work advances the quantitative analysis of a wide range of linear and nonlinear transport phenomena in quantum materials.