In this paper we review recent progress in anitferromagnetic spintronics. We discuss how the configuration of the magnetic order can be read and manipulated electrically and how can this be utilized in antiferromagnetic memories. We also discuss how electrical currents can be converted to spin currents in antiferromagnets via the so-called spin Hall effect.

Noncollinear antiferromagnets, such as Mn3Sn and Mn3Ir , were recently shown to be analogous to ferromagnets in that they have a large anomalous Hall effect. Here we show that these materials are similar to ferromagnets in another aspect: the charge current in these materials is spin polarized. In addition, we show that the same mechanism that leads to the spin-polarized current also leads to a transverse spin current, which has a distinct symmetry and origin from the conventional spin Hall effect. We illustrate the existence of the spin-polarized current and the transverse spin current by performing ab initio microscopic calculations and by analyzing the symmetry. We discuss possible applications of these novel spin currents, such as an antiferromagnetic metallic or tunneling junction.

In this work we give a general symmetry analysis of spin-orbit torques in antiferromagnets and ferromagnets. We show that the necessary condition for the existence of spin-orbit torque on magnetic sublattice is locally broken inversion symmetry on the sublattice. We illustrate the symmetry concepts on two antiferromagnetic models.

Antiferromagnets are hard to control by external magnetic fields because of the alternating directions of magnetic moments on individual atoms and the resulting zero net magnetization. However, relativistic quantum mechanics allows for generating current-induced internal fields whose sign alternates with the periodicity of the antiferromagnetic lattice. Using these fields, which couple strongly to the antiferromagnetic order, we demonstrate room-temperature electrical switching between stable configurations in antiferromagnetic CuMnAs thin-film devices

In this we predict that in antiferromagnets with special symmetry, electrical current can generate effective magnetic fields. These fields have origin in relativistic physics and crucially can have the same order as the antiferromagnetic order (Néel order). In this papers, collinear antiferromagnets were studied, for which this simply means that the effective field alternates in sign between the two sublattices.