The anomalous Nernst effect generates a voltage transverse to an applied thermal gradient in some magnetically ordered systems. While the effect was considered excluded in compensated magnetic materials with collinear ordering, in the recently identified symmetry-class of altermagnets, the anomalous Nernst effect is possible despite the compensated collinear spin arrangement. In this work, we show that epitaxial Mn5Si3 thin films grown on Si manifest an anomalous Nernst effect with a finite spontaneous signal at zero magnetic field despite the vanishing spontaneous magnetization. We attribute this to the previously theoretically predicted and experimentally corroborated altermagnetism of epitaxial Mn5Si3 thin films grown on Si. The observed spontaneous anomalous Nernst coefficient reaches the value of 0.26 μV/K with the corresponding spontaneous Nernst conductivity of 0.22 A/(K ⋅ m). To complement our measurements, we perform density-functional theory calculations of the momentum-resolved anomalous Nernst conductivity, highlighting the contributions of altermagnetic pseudonodal surfaces and ladder transitions to the Berry curvature. Our results illustrate the value of unconventional d-wave wave altermagnets composed of abundant and non-toxic light elements for thermo-electrics and spin-caloritronics.

Aix Marseille University CNRS CINAM AMUTECH Marseille France

Departamento de Física Grupo de Investigación en Física Aplicada Universidad del Norte Barranquilla Colombia

Department of Physics Texas A and M University College Station TX USA

Department of Physics University of Konstanz Konstanz Germany

Faculty of Electrical Engineering Czech Technical University Prague Prague 6 Czechia

Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Charles University Prague Czechia

Institute of Physics Czech Academy of Sciences Prague Czechia

Institute of Physics Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Mainz Germany

Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids Nöthnitzer Str 40 01187 Dresden Germany

Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems Dresden Germany

School of Physics and Astronomy University of Nottingham Nottingham UK

Solid State Physics Laboratory ETH Zürich Switzerland

University Grenoble Alpes CNRS CEA Grenoble INP IRIG SPINTEC Grenoble France

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Observation of the anomalous Nernst effect in altermagnetic candidate Mn5Si3