Polar unidirectional magnetotransport in $p-$type tellurene from quantum geometry

Abstract

Unidirectional magnetoresistance, or electric magnetochiral anisotropy (eMChA), is a nonlinear magnetotransport phenomenon that arises in noncentrosymmetric conductors , where changes in resistance $R(B)$ are: (i) chiral, $ΔR(B)/R(0)=2\,χ\, {\bf I}\cdot{\bf B}$, or (ii) polar, $ΔR(B)/R(0)=2\,γ\, {\bf I}\cdot({\bf P}\times{\bf B})$, with eMChA coefficients $χ$ and $γ$. In [Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 106602 (2025)], we showed that the eMChA in the conduction band of tellurene is polar ($χ=0$, $γ\neq 0$) and emerges from the quantum metric dipole due to its Weyl node and from the lone pair polarization ${\bf P}$. Here, we extend our work to the valence band of tellurene, where the eMChA is usually said to be chiral ($χ\neq 0, γ= 0$). We show that also a polar coefficient $γ\neq 0$ emerges naturally through a downfolding procedure, in which remote Weyl-node containing bands induce momentum-space gradients of the quantum metric in the low-energy levels, activating finite metric dipoles. Combining semiclassical Boltzmann transport with a ${\bf k}\cdot{\bf p}$ description of tellurene, our numerical calculations agree quantitatively with doping ($μ$) dependent second-harmonic measurements of the longitudinal voltage $V^{2ω}_\parallel(μ)$ in perpendicular field. The combined chiral and polar characters ($χ\neq0, γ\neq 0)$ of the eMChA in tellurene also explains the shift in the angular ($ϕ$) dependence of $V^{2ω}_\parallel(ϕ)$ for in plane fields. Our results demonstrate that the polar eMChA can arise in topologically trivial bands through multiband effects and establishes tellurene as a platform for quantum-geometric rectification in both electron and hole regimes.