Magnetic hopfions are topologically protected three-dimensional solitons that are constituted by a tube which exhibits a topologically nontrivial spin texture in the cross-section profile and is closed to a torus. Here we show that the hopfion's locally uncompensated emergent field leads to a topological Hall signature, although the topological Hall effect vanishes on the global level. The topological Hall signature is switchable by magnetic fields or electric currents and occurs independently of the anomalous and conventional Hall effects. It can therefore be exploited to electrically detect hopfions in experiments and even to distinguish them from other textures like skyrmion tubes. Furthermore, it can potentially be utilized in spintronic devices. Exemplarily, we propose a hopfion-based racetrack data storage device and simulate the electrical detection of the hopfions as carriers of information.

6 pages, 4 figures