skip to main content


Title: Gapless Dirac magnons in CrCl3
Abstract Bosonic Dirac materials are testbeds for dissipationless spin-based electronics. In the quasi two-dimensional honeycomb lattice of CrX 3 (X = Cl, Br, I), Dirac magnons have been predicted at the crossing of acoustical and optical spin waves, analogous to Dirac fermions in graphene. Here we show that, distinct from CrBr 3 and CrI 3 , gapless Dirac magnons are present in bulk CrCl 3 , with inelastic neutron scattering intensity at low temperatures approaching zero at the Dirac K point. Upon warming, magnon-magnon interactions induce strong renormalization and decreased lifetimes, with a ~25% softening of the upper magnon branch intensity from 5 to 50 K, though magnon features persist well above T N . Moreover, on cooling below ~50 K, an anomalous increase in the a -axis lattice constant and a hardening of a ~26 meV phonon feature are observed, indicating magnetoelastic and spin-phonon coupling arising from an increase in the in-plane spin correlations that begins tens of Kelvin above T N .  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2018870
NSF-PAR ID:
10459015
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
npj Quantum Materials
Volume:
7
Issue:
1
ISSN:
2397-4648
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1.  
    more » « less
  2. Local thermal magnetization fluctuations in Li-doped MnTe are found to increase its thermopower α strongly at temperatures up to 900 K. Below the Néel temperature ( T N ~ 307 K), MnTe is antiferromagnetic, and magnon drag contributes α md to the thermopower, which scales as ~ T 3 . Magnon drag persists into the paramagnetic state up to >3 × T N because of long-lived, short-range antiferromagnet-like fluctuations (paramagnons) shown by neutron spectroscopy to exist in the paramagnetic state. The paramagnon lifetime is longer than the charge carrier–magnon interaction time; its spin-spin spatial correlation length is larger than the free-carrier effective Bohr radius and de Broglie wavelength. Thus, to itinerant carriers, paramagnons look like magnons and give a paramagnon-drag thermopower. This contribution results in an optimally doped material having a thermoelectric figure of merit ZT > 1 at T > ~900 K, the first material with a technologically meaningful thermoelectric energy conversion efficiency from a spin-caloritronic effect. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract Spin and lattice are two fundamental degrees of freedom in a solid, and their fluctuations about the equilibrium values in a magnetic ordered crystalline lattice form quasiparticles termed magnons (spin waves) and phonons (lattice waves), respectively. In most materials with strong spin-lattice coupling (SLC), the interaction of spin and lattice induces energy gaps in the spin wave dispersion at the nominal intersections of magnon and phonon modes. Here we use neutron scattering to show that in the two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals honeycomb lattice ferromagnetic CrGeTe 3 , spin waves propagating within the 2D plane exhibit an anomalous dispersion, damping, and breakdown of quasiparticle conservation, while magnons along the c axis behave as expected for a local moment ferromagnet. These results indicate the presence of dynamical SLC arising from the zero-temperature quantum fluctuations in CrGeTe 3 , suggesting that the observed in-plane spin waves are mixed spin and lattice quasiparticles fundamentally different from pure magnons and phonons. 
    more » « less
  4. We study the nature of the debated thermal Hall effect in the candidate Kitaev material α-RuCl3. Without assuming the existence of a gapped spin liquid, we show that a realistic minimal spin model in the canted zigzag phase suffices, at the level of linear spin-wave theory, to qualitatively explain the observed temperature and magnetic field dependence of the non-quantized thermal Hall conductivity κ_xy, with its origin lying in the Berry curvature of the magnon bands. The magnitude of the effect is however too small compared to the measurement by Czajka et al. [Nat. Mater. 22, 36-41 (2023)], even after scanning a broad range of model parameters so as to maximize κ_xy/T. Recent experiments suggest that phonons play an important role, which we show couple to the spins, endowing phonons with chirality. The resulting intrinsic contribution, from both magnons and phonons, is however still insufficient to explain the observed magnitude of the Hall signal. After careful analysis of the extrinsic phonon mechanisms, we use the recent experimental data on thermal transport in α-RuCl3 by Lefrançois et al. [Phys. Rev. X 12, 021025 (2022)] to determine the phenomenological ratio of the extrinsic and intrinsic contributions η≡κ_E/κ_I. We find η=1.2±0.5, which when combined with our computed intrinsic value, explains quantitavely both the magnitude and detailed temperature dependence of the experimental thermal Hall effect in α-RuCl3. 
    more » « less
  5. Abstract A magnon and a phonon are the quanta of spin wave and lattice wave, respectively, and they can hybridize into a magnon polaron when their frequencies and wavenumbers match close enough the values at the exceptional point. Guided by an analytically calculated magnon polaron dispersion, dynamical phase-field simulations are performed to investigate the effects of magnon polaron formation on the attenuation of a bulk acoustic wave in a magnetic insulator film. It is shown that a stronger magnon–phonon coupling leads to a larger attenuation. The simulations also demonstrate the existence of a minimum magnon–phonon interaction time required for the magnon polaron formation, which is found to decrease with the magnetoelastic coupling coefficient but increase with the magnetic damping coefficient. These results deepen the understanding of the mechanisms of acoustic attenuation in magnetic crystals and provide insights into the design of new-concept spin interconnects that operate based on acoustically driven magnon propagation. 
    more » « less