Detection of antiferromagnetic order in a RuO2/Pt bilayer by spin Hall magnetoresistance

Altermagnets have spin-split band structures that correspond to the rotational symmetry of the two sublattices in real space. Theoretically, their unique band structures are expected to exhibit intriguing transport phenomena, depending on their magnetic structures. Anomalous Hall effect (AHE) measurement is a method by which to electrically detect magnetic structure and has been reported for typical altermagnets, such as RuO2 and MnTe. However, AHE measurements are limited to specific cases. Thus, it is important to apply other methods by which to determine functionality based on magnetic structure. In this study, we report the spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR) in a RuO2 (1 nm)/Pt (10 nm) system. A negative SMR signal is clearly observed, indicating the spin-flop antiferromagnetic structure of RuO2. Interestingly, a negative SMR was observed, even at 1 T, which is much smaller than the estimated spin-flop field reported in a previous study. This reflects the thinner film of RuO2 in our study, suggesting that thickness control is effective in adjusting the magnetic anisotropy of RuO2. In addition, the temperature-dependent SMR measurement revealed the Néel temperature of 1 nm thick RuO2 to be 70 ± 9 K. Our results show that SMR measurement can serve as an efficient tool to explore the magnetic features in an altermagnet.