Abstract
In materials with broken inversion symmetry, nonreciprocal magneto-transport manifests as a bilinear dependence of charge conductivity on electric and magnetic fields. This phenomenon is rooted in symmetry and electronic quantum geometry and is relevant for rectification and detection technologies. Experimental studies generally attribute nonreciprocal magneto-transport to Zeeman-driven mechanisms and exhibit quadratic scaling with conductivity. Here, we report a microscopic mechanism based on Lorentz skew scattering in BiTeBr, arising from the cooperation of classical Lorentz force and quantum skew scattering, exhibiting a quartic scaling of the nonreciprocal response. Systematic measurements on samples with different mobilities reveal a crossover between Zeeman-related and Lorentz-skew scattering-dominated regimes, uncovering the mobility plays a central role in determining the dominant mechanism. Our finding unveils the leading mechanism in high-mobility systems and suggests a universal principle towards strong nonreciprocal response by enhancing electronic relaxation time in topological materials, rendering guidance for low-dissipation rectifiers and high-performance quantum electronics.
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by ASTAR (M24M8b0004), Singapore National Research foundation (NRF-CRP30−2023-0003, NRF-CRP31-0001, NRF2023-ITC004-001 and NRF-MSG−2023-0002) and Singapore Ministry of Education Tier 2 Grant (MOE-T2EP50125-0014, MOE-T2EP50222-0018). C.X. was sponsored by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.12574114) and the start-up funding from Fudan University. S.A.Y. was supported by The HK PolyU Start-up Grant No. (P0057929). N.W. was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 12574057 and No.12550405), the HFNL Self-Deployed Project (ZB2025020200) and the Scientific Research Project of Westlake University (No. WU2025B015). S.X. was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 12574203). We thank Chao Zhang from the Instrumentation and Service Center for Physical Sciences at Westlake University for technical support in data acquisition.
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Lu, X.F., Zhang, XJ., Wang, N. et al. Lorentz skew scattering nonreciprocal magneto-transport. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71789-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71789-y
