Photoinduced topologically trivial magnons with finite thermal Hall effect

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that periodically driven 2D insulating honeycomb ferromagnets can host photoinduced Dirac magnons and trivial magnon insulators with finite thermal Hall effects, highlighting unique bosonic phenomena not seen in electronic systems.

Contribution

It introduces a mechanism for photoinducing topologically trivial magnons with finite thermal Hall effect in 2D magnets, distinct from electronic Floquet systems.

Findings

Photoinduced Dirac magnons appear at topological phase transitions.

Finite thermal Hall effect observed in photoinduced trivial magnon insulators.

Unique bosonic effects enable phenomena absent in electronic systems.

Abstract

In two-dimensional (2D) insulating magnets, the thermal Hall effect of magnons is believed to be a consequence of topological magnon insulator with separated magnon bands and a well-defined Chern number. Due to broken time-reversal symmetry the thermal Hall effect vanishes in Dirac magnons. In this paper, we show that periodically driven semi-Dirac magnon in 2D insulating honeycomb ferromagnet results in a photoinduced Dirac magnon at the topological phase transition between a photoinduced topological and trivial magnon insulator. Remarkably, the photoinduced Dirac magnon and the photoinduced trivial magnon insulator possess a nonzero Berry curvature and exhibit a finite thermal Hall effect. These intriguing properties of periodically driven 2D insulating magnets originate from the bosonic nature of magnons. Hence, they are not expected to exist in 2D electronic Floquet systems.