Poster
3

Unconventional Thermal Magnon Hall Effect in a Ferromagnetic Topological Insulator

Avatar
Voices Powered byElevenlabs logo

Avatar
user

What is the main idea of the paper?

AI: The main idea of the paper is to investigate the thermal Hall effect of magnons in different materials, including chiral ferromagnets with weak Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, KOC modulated honeycomb ferromagnetic lattices with DMI and ${\mathrm{CrI}_3}$ monolayers, in order to understand their topological properties and the effect of various parameters on the thermal Hall conductivity. The authors explore the different topological phases that can be realized in these systems and the mechanism behind the sign changes in the thermal Hall conductivity seen in some of these phases. The paper concludes that these materials may be useful for the future design of two-dimensional thermal components since the thermal Hall conductivity can be easily tuned with external parameters such as the magnetic field and temperature.
Avatar
user

How is thermal conductivity defined?

AI: Thermal conductivity is not defined in this part of the paper, except for a discussion of thermal Hall conductivity in a magnonic system.

Authors

Christian Moulsdale, Pierre A. Pantaleón, Ramon Carrillo-Bastos, Yang Xian

Abstract

We present theoretically the thermal Hall effect of magnons in a ferromagnetic lattice with a Kekulé-O coupling (KOC) modulation and a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI). Through a strain-based mechanism for inducing the KOC modulation, we identify four topological phases in terms of the KOC parameter and DMI strength. We calculate the thermal magnon Hall conductivity ${\kappa^{xy}}$ at low temperature in each of these phases. We predict an unconventional conductivity due to a non-zero Berry curvature emerging from band proximity effects in the topologically trivial phase. We find sign changes of ${\kappa^{xy}}$ as a function of the model parameters, associated with the local Berry curvature and occupation probability of the bulk bands. Throughout, ${\kappa^{xy}}$ can be easily tuned with external parameters such as the magnetic field and temperature.

Follow Us on

2 comments

Avatar
scicastboard

Thank you for your submission.

Question from one of the expert in our Board. How do you define the thermal Hall effect in this system?
The usual linear response approach to, say,  electrical transport calculates current-current corellator and the corresponding Drude diagram, where the vertices are $e {\bf v}$. But with thermal transport - transport of energy its much trickier, because it's not clear how to define energy current especially in interacting systems. Do you face a similar challenge in this system? It's not entirely obvious where Eqs. (15) & (16) come from.
Thanks,
ScienceCast Board 

Avatar
pantagorico

Thanks for the question. The heat currents are due to a temperature gradient. Because it is a statistical force, a nice trick is to introduce a fictitious gravitational field. On the other hand, you are right that Eqs. 15 and 16 are not obvious. A beautiful explanation that deserves to be read can be found in arXiv:1103.1221v3
 

Answer
Add comment
Recommended SciCasts