Spin Wave Analysis of Low-Temperature Thermal Hall Effect in the Candidate Kitaev Spin Liquid $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$

TL;DR

This paper uses spin wave theory to analyze the low-temperature thermal Hall effect in $ ext{α-RuCl}_3$, showing that existing models do not match experimental data and proposing a variant that explains the observed thermal Hall conductivity.

Contribution

The study demonstrates that the low-temperature thermal Hall effect can be explained by magnon Berry curvature, providing a new way to constrain effective Hamiltonians for $ ext{α-RuCl}_3$.

Findings

Existing models with Kitaev interaction predict incorrect sign for $_{xy}$.

A variant of a previous model reproduces the large observed $_{xy}$.

Thermal Hall effect can be generated solely by magnon Berry curvature.

Abstract

Proposed effective Hamiltonians from the literature for the material $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$ are used to compute the magnon thermal Hall conductivity, $\kappa_{xy}$, using linear spin wave theory for the magnetically ordered state. No model previously proposed that was tested explains published experimental data. Models with Kitaev interaction $K>0$ are seen to predict $\kappa_{xy}\gtrsim 0$, which is inconsistent with the data. Fluctuations toward a Kitaev-type spin liquid would have the wrong sign to explain the data. However, a slight variant of a previously proposed model predicts a large $\kappa_{xy}$, demonstrating that the low-temperature thermal Hall effect could be generated exclusively by the Berry curvature of the magnon bands. The experimental data of $\kappa_{xy}$ can therefore serve as another method to constrain a proposed effective Hamiltonian.