Quantum anomalous Hall effect in perfectly compensated collinear antiferromagnetic thin films

We show that the quantum anomalous Hall effect almost always occurs in magnetic topological insulator thin films whenever the top and bottom surface layer magnetizations are parallel at some temperature, independent of the interior layer magnetization configuration. Using this criterion, we identify structures that have a quantum anomalous Hall effect even though they have collinear magnetic structures with no netmagnetization, and discuss strategies for realizing these interesting magnetic states experimentally.

Automated summary

We demonstrate that the quantum anomalous Hall effect can be observed in magnetic topological insulator thin films as long as the magnetizations of the top and bottom surface layers are parallel at certain temperature, regardless of the magnetization configuration of the interior layers.