Nonlinear Topological Magnon Spin Hall Effect

TL;DR

This paper predicts a nonlinear topological magnon spin Hall effect in antiferromagnets, revealing hidden gauge field components through three-magnon interactions and demonstrating giant, sign-reversible Hall angles.

Contribution

It uncovers the role of concealed gauge field components in nonlinear magnon transport and introduces the concept of a nonlinear topological magnon spin Hall effect.

Findings

Prediction of giant Hall angles in magnon-skyrmion interactions

Reversal of Hall angle sign with magnon handedness

Identification of hidden gauge field components in nonlinear transport

Abstract

When a magnon passes through two-dimensional magnetic textures, it will experience a fictitious magnetic field originating from the $3\times 3$ skew-symmetric gauge fields. To date, only one of the three independent components of the gauge fields has been found to play a role in generating the fictitious magnetic field while the rest two are perfectly hidden. In this work, we show that they are concealed in the nonlinear magnon transport in magnetic textures. Without loss of generality, we theoretically study the nonlinear magnon-skyrmion interaction in antiferromagnets. By analyzing the scattering features of three-magnon processes between the circularly-polarized incident magnon and breathing skyrmion, we predict a giant Hall angle of both the confluence and splitting modes. Furthermore, we find that the Hall angle reverses its sign when one switches the handedness of the incident magnons. We dub it nonlinear topological magnon spin Hall effect. Our findings are deeply rooted in the bosonic nature of magnons that the particle number is not conserved, which has no counterpart in low-energy fermionic systems, and may open the door for probing gauge fields by nonlinear means.