Gate-tunable giant negative magnetoresistance in tellurene driven by quantum geometry

Abstract

Abstract Negative magnetoresistance in conventional two-dimensional electron gases is a well known phenomenon, but its origin in complex and topological materials endowed with nontrivial quantum geometry remains elusive. Here, we report a giant negative magnetoresistance reaching  −90% of the zero-field resistance, R 0 , in n -type tellurene films. The effect persists up to 35 T at cryogenic temperatures and is suppressed when the chemical potential moves away from the conduction-band Weyl node, suggesting a quantum geometric origin. We propose two mechanisms: quantum geometric enhancement of diffusion and a magnetoelectric spin interaction that locks the spin of a cyclotron-moving Weyl fermion, in the presence of an intrinsic inversion-breaking polar field $${{\boldsymbol{{\mathcal{E}}}}}$$ E and an applied magnetic field B , to its guiding-center drift, $$({{\boldsymbol{{\mathcal{E}}}}}\times {{{\bf{B}}}})\cdot \sigma$$ ( E × B ) ⋅ σ . The resulting diffusion enhancement yields $$\Delta {R}_{zz}/{R}_{0}=-{\beta }_{g}{({{\boldsymbol{{\mathcal{E}}}}}\times {{{\bf{B}}}})}^{2}$$ Δ R z z / R 0 = − β g ( E × B ) 2 , with β g set by the quantum metric. Our findings establish a quantum geometric, non-Markovian memory effect in magnetotransport.