Thermal drag in spin ladders coupled to phonons

TL;DR

This paper investigates the spin-phonon drag effect in spin-1/2 two-leg ladders, revealing that the drag heat conductivity can be comparable to the triplon heat conductivity and is sensitive to magnetic fields.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework for calculating spin-phonon drag in spin ladders using a bond operator approach and the projection operator method, highlighting the significance of drag effects.

Findings

Drag heat conductivity can match triplon heat conductivity in magnitude.

Drag and diagonal conductivities have similar temperature dependences.

Drag conductivity is highly affected by external magnetic fields.

Abstract

We study the spin-phonon drag effect in the magnetothermal transport of spin-1/2 two-leg ladders coupled to lattice degrees of freedom. Using a bond operator description for the triplon excitations of the spin ladder and magnetoelastic coupling to acoustic phonons, we employ the time convolutionless projection operator method to derive expressions for the diagonal and off-diagonal thermal conductivities of the coupled two-component triplon-phonon system. We find that for magnetoelastic coupling strengths and diagonal scattering rates relevant to copper-oxide spin-ladders the drag heat conductivity can be of similar magnitude as the diagonal triplon heat conductivity. Moreover, we show that the drag and diagonal conductivities display very similar overall temperature dependences. Finally, the drag conductivity is shown to be rather susceptible to external magnetic fields.