Approximately quantized thermal Hall effect of chiral liquids coupled to phonons

TL;DR

This paper studies how phonons influence the quantization of the thermal Hall effect in chiral liquids, showing that phonons disrupt ballistic edge transport but still allow approximate quantization, with corrections arising from phonon Berry phases.

Contribution

It demonstrates that phonon coupling destroys ballistic edge thermal transport but maintains approximate quantization, highlighting the role of phonon Berry phases in corrections.

Findings

Phonons destroy ballistic edge thermal transport.

Thermal Hall conductivity remains approximately quantized.

Intrinsic phonon Berry phases cause temperature-dependent corrections.

Abstract

The recent observation of a half-integer quantized thermal Hall effect in $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$ is interpreted as a unique signature of a chiral spin liquid with a Majorana edge mode. A similar quantized thermal Hall effect is expected in chiral topological superconductors. The unavoidable presence of gapless acoustic phonons, however, implies that, in contrast to the quantized electrical conductivity, the thermal Hall conductivity $\kappa_xy$ is never exactly quantized in real materials. Here, we investigate how phonons affect the quantization of the thermal conductivity focusing on the edge theory. As an example we consider a Kitaev spin liquid gapped by an external magnetic field coupled to acoustic phonons. The coupling to phonons destroys the ballistic thermal transport of the edge mode completely, as energy can leak into the bulk, thus drastically modifying the edge-picture of the thermal Hall effect. Nevertheless, the thermal Hall conductivity remains approximately quantized and we argue, that the coupling to phonons to the edge mode is a necessary condition for the observation of the quantized thermal Hall effect. The strength of this edge coupling does, however, not affect the conductivity. We argue that for sufficiently clean systems the leading correction to the quantized thermal Hall effect, $\Delta \kappa_{xy}/T \sim \text{sign(B)} \, T^2$, arises from a intrinsic anomalous Hall effect of the acoustic phonons due to Berry phases imprinted by the chiral (spin) liquid in the bulk. This correction depends on the sign but not the amplitude of the external magnetic field.