Topological thermal Hall effect due to Weyl magnons

TL;DR

This paper theoretically demonstrates a zero magnetic field topological thermal Hall effect caused by Weyl magnons in stacked kagomé antiferromagnets, highlighting a new way to probe low-energy excitations and broken time-reversal symmetry.

Contribution

It provides the first theoretical evidence linking Weyl magnons in noncoplanar frustrated magnets to the anomalous thermal Hall effect without external magnetic fields.

Findings

Weyl magnons originate from lowest excitation states.

Thermal Hall effect depends on Weyl magnon distribution in momentum space.

Experimental observation feasible at low temperatures due to low-energy magnons.

Abstract

We present the first theoretical evidence of zero magnetic field topological (anomalous) thermal Hall effect due to Weyl magnons. Here, we consider Weyl magnons in stacked noncoplanar frustrated kagom\'e antiferromagnets recently proposed by Owerre, [arXiv:1708.04240]. The Weyl magnons in this system result from macroscopically broken time-reversal symmetry by the scalar spin chirality of noncoplanar chiral spin textures. Most importantly, they come from the lowest excitation, therefore they can be easily observed experimentally at low temperatures due to the population effect. Similar to electronic Weyl nodes close to the Fermi energy, Weyl magnon nodes in the lowest excitation are the most important. Indeed, we show that the topological (anomalous) thermal Hall effect in this system arises from nonvanishing Berry curvature due to Weyl magnon nodes in the lowest excitation, and it depends on their distribution (distance) in momentum space. The present result paves the way to directly probe low excitation Weyl magnons and macroscopically broken time-reversal symmetry in three-dimensional frustrated magnets with the anomalous thermal Hall effect.