Spin-conserving and spin-flip magnetic scattering in the altermagnetic spin-splitter effect

Abstract

Critical magnetic fluctuations scatter electrons strongly near an ordering transition, but they barely degrade the charge current, because they scatter mostly through small angles. In an altermagnet the electric field also drives a spin current, and a nearly forward spin flip moves an electron to the other spin band at almost unchanged velocity. We develop a Boltzmann theory of the spin splitter ratio that keeps the full collision operator of quasistatic magnetic fluctuations and its change with the magnetic order. Fluctuations of equal total strength give the same resistivity for every fraction of spin flips, yet they can move the spin splitter ratio in opposite directions. Spin conserving fluctuations relax the spin current at about the charge relaxation rate, whereas forward flips equalize the two spin populations at equal energy at the quasiparticle rate, which in two dimensions grows linearly with the correlation length. Energy conservation on the split bands protects the part of the spin current carried by the band shift of the occupied states at every scattering strength, and the splitting blocks forward flips once the spin Fermi lines lie farther apart than the inverse correlation length. When flips dominate, a quarter to a half of the lattice band ratio survives. The transport time approximation reproduces the initial growth of the resistivity but recovers only a quarter to a half of the initial fall of the ratio, and a disorder series at fixed reduced temperature measures this fall independent of the order amplitude.