The spin-flop transition in the quasi two dimensional antiferromagnet MnPS3 detected via thermally generated magnon transport

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the detection of the spin-flop transition in MnPS3 using thermally generated nonlocal magnon transport and the inverse anomalous spin Hall effect, revealing out-of-plane magnon spin polarization changes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to detect the spin-flop transition in antiferromagnetic materials via nonlocal magnon transport and inverse anomalous spin Hall effect.

Findings

Detection of the spin-flop transition without spurious effects

Reversal of magnon spin accumulation signals before and after transition

Magnons generated by the spin Seebeck effect are sensitive to the transition

Abstract

We present the detection of the spin-flop transition in the antiferromagnetic van der Waals material MnPS3 via thermally generated nonlocal magnon transport using permalloy detector strips. The inverse anomalous spin Hall effect has the unique power to detect an out-of-plane spin accumulation which enables us to detect magnons with an out-of-plane spin polarization; in contrast to strips of high spin-orbit material such as Pt which only possess the spin Hall effect and are only sensitive to an in-plane spin polarization of the spin accumulation. We show that nonlocal magnon transport is able to measure the spin-flop transition in the absence of other spurious effects. Our measurements show the detection of magnons generated by the spin Seebeck effect before and after the spin-flop transition where the signal reversal of the magnon spin accumulation agrees with the OOP spin polarization carried by magnon modes before and after the SF transition.