2The electrical Hall effect is the production of a transverse voltage under an out-of-plane magnetic field [1]. Historically, studies of the Hall effect have led to major breakthroughs including the discoveries of Berry curvature and the topological Chern invariants [2, 3]. In magnets, the internal magnetization allows Hall conductivity in the absence of external magnetic field [3]. This anomalous Hall effect (AHE) has become an important tool to study quantum magnets [3][4][5][6][7][8]. In nonmagnetic materials without external magnetic fields, the electrical Hall effect is rarely explored because of the constraint by time-reversal symmetry.However, strictly speaking, only the Hall effect in the linear response regime, i.e., the Hall voltage linearly proportional to the external electric field, identically vanishes due to time-reversal symmetry [9]. The Hall effect in the nonlinear response regime, on the other hand, may not be subject to such symmetry constraints [10][11][12]. Here, we report the observation of the nonlinear Hall effect (NLHE) [12] in the electrical transport of the nonmagnetic 2D quantum material, bilayer WTe 2 . Specifically, flowing an electrical current in bilayer WTe 2 leads to a nonlinear Hall voltage in the absence of magnetic field. The NLHE exhibits unusual properties sharply distinct from the AHE in metals: The NLHE shows a quadratic I -V characteristic; It strongly dominates the nonlinear longitudinal response, leading to a Hall angle of ∼ 90 • . We further show that the NLHE directly measures the "dipole moment" [12] of the Berry curvature, which arises from layer-polarized Dirac fermions in bilayer WTe 2 . Our results demonstrate a new Hall effect and provide a powerful methodology to detect Berry curvature in a wide range of nonmagnetic quantum materials in an energy-resolved way.In 1879 Edwin H. Hall observed that, when an electrical current passes through a gold film under a magnetic field, a transverse voltage develops [1]. This effect, known as the Hall effect, forms the basis of both fundamental research and practical applications such as magnetic field measurements and motion detectors. In contrast to the classical Hall effect where the Lorentz force bends the trajectory of the charge carriers, quantum mechanics describes the "bending" by the intrinsic geometry of the quantum electron wavefunctions under time-reversal symmetry breaking. This crucial theoretical understanding eventually led to the seminal discoveries of the Berry curvature and the topological Chern number, which have become pillars of modern condensed matter physics [2, 3]. One important cur-3 rent frontier is to identify AHE with quantized or topological character in unconventional magnetic quantum materials, where spin-orbit coupling (SOC), geometrical frustration and electronic correlations coexist [3][4][5][6][7][8]. These extensive studies [1,[3][4][5][6][7][8] have established a paradigm for the electrical Hall effect: (1) A non-vanishing Hall conductivity arises from the momentum-integrated Berry curva...

The nonlinear Hall effect has opened the door towards deeper understanding of topological states of matter. Disorder plays indispensable roles in various linear Hall effects, such as the localization in the quantized Hall effects and the extrinsic mechanisms of the anomalous, spin, and valley Hall effects. Unlike in the linear Hall effects, disorder enters the nonlinear Hall effect even in the leading order. Here, we derive the formulas of the nonlinear Hall conductivity in the presence of disorder scattering. We apply the formulas to calculate the nonlinear Hall response of the tilted 2D Dirac model, which is the symmetry-allowed minimal model for the nonlinear Hall effect and can serve as a building block in realistic band structures. More importantly, we construct the general scaling law of the nonlinear Hall effect, which may help in experiments to distinguish disorder-induced contributions to the nonlinear Hall effect in the future.

Unconventional responses upon breaking discrete or crystal symmetries open avenues for exploring emergent physical systems and materials. By breaking inversion symmetry, a nonlinear Hall signal can be observed, even in the presence of time-reversal symmetry, quite different from the conventional Hall effects. Low-symmetry two-dimensional materials are promising candidates for the nonlinear Hall effect, but it is less known when a strong nonlinear Hall signal can be measured, in particular, its connections with the band-structure properties. By using model analysis, we find prominent nonlinear Hall signals near tilted band anticrossings and band inversions. These band signatures can be used to explain the strong nonlinear Hall effect in the recent experiments on two-dimensional WTe2. This Letter will be instructive not only for analyzing the transport signatures of the nonlinear Hall effect but also for exploring unconventional responses in emergent materials.

An intriguing phenomenon in topological semimetals and topological insulators is the negative magnetoresistance (MR) observed when a magnetic field is applied along the current direction. A prevailing understanding to the negative MR in topological semimetals is the chiral anomaly, which, however, is not well defined in topological insulators. We calculate the MR of a threedimensional topological insulator, by using the semiclassical equations of motion, in which the Berry curvature explicitly induces an anomalous velocity and orbital moment. Our theoretical results are in quantitative agreement with the experiments. The negative MR is not sensitive to temperature and increases as the Fermi energy approaches the band edge. The orbital moment and g factors also play important roles in the negative MR. Our results give a reasonable explanation to the negative MR in 3D topological insulators and will be helpful in understanding the anomalous quantum transport in topological states of matter.

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We propose a modified Boltzmann nonlinear electric-transport framework which differs from the nonlinear generalization of the linear Boltzmann formalism by a contribution that has no counterpart in linear response. This contribution follows from the interband-coherence effect of dc electricfields during scattering and is related to the interband Berry connection. As an application, we demonstrate it in the second-order nonlinear Hall effect of the tilted massive Dirac model. The intuitive Boltzmann constructions are confirmed by a quantum kinetic theory, which shows that arbitrary nth-order nonlinear dc response up to the first three leading contributions in the weak disorder potential is handled by the same few gauge-invariant semiclassical ingredients.

The charge-density-wave (CDW) mechanism of the 3D quantum Hall effect has been observed recently in ZrTe5 [Tang et al., Nature 569, 537 (2019)]. Quite different from previous cases, the CDW forms on a 1D band of Landau levels, which strongly depends on the magnetic field. However, its theory is still lacking. We develop a theory for the CDW mechanism of 3D quantum Hall effect. The theory can capture the main features in the experiments. We find a magnetic field induced second-order phase transition to the CDW phase. We find that electron-phonon interactions, rather than electron-electron interactions, dominate the order parameter. We extract the value of electron-phonon coupling constant from the non-Ohmic I-V relation. We point out a commensurateincommensurate CDW crossover in the experiment. More importantly, our theory explores a rare case, in which a magnetic field can induce an order-parameter phase transition in one direction but a topological phase transition in other two directions, both depend on one magnetic field. It will be useful and inspire further experiments and theories on this emergent phase of matter.