Intrinsic Nernst effect of the magnon orbital moment in a honeycomb ferromagnet

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates the intrinsic Nernst effect of magnon orbital moments in honeycomb ferromagnets, revealing their independence from Chern number sign and proposing experimental detection in Kitaev materials.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of magnon orbital moment Nernst conductivity and explores its properties and tunability in specific honeycomb ferromagnetic models.

Findings

Magnon orbital moment Berry curvature is largely independent of Chern number sign.

Certain Kitaev materials allow broad tunability of MOMNC with magnetic field.

Estimated MOMNC for CrI3 in specific models shows potential for experimental observation.

Abstract

The Nernst effect of the magnon orbital moment is theoretically investigated in a honeycomb ferromagnet, whose Hamiltonian contains the Heisenberg exchange, the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya, the Kitaev, and the Zeeman interactions. More specifically, we obtain the magnon band structure, the Berry curvature, the magnon orbital moment Berry curvature, and the magnon orbital moment Nernst conductivity (MOMNC) for the Hamiltonian within the linear spin-wave theory in the polarized phase. We found the magnon orbital moment Berry curvature is largely independent of the sign of the Chern number of the band. For an experimental proposal, we estimate MOMNC of $\mathrm{CrI}_{3}$ for the Heisenberg-Kitaev-$\Gamma$-Zeeman model and Heisenberg-Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya-Zeeman model for a perpendicular external magnetic field. We found that certain Kitaev materials provide us with a broad tunability of the MOMNC through a magnetic field. We envision that our findings lead to further investigations of the novel transport properties of the magnon orbital moment.