Predicted versatile topological nodal magnons in Tb-based icosahedral quasicrystal 1/1 approximants

TL;DR

This paper predicts two types of topological nodal magnons in Tb-based icosahedral quasicrystal approximants using symmetry analysis, revealing universal features of topological magnons in complex magnetic materials.

Contribution

It introduces a symmetry-based method to identify topological nodal magnons in quasicrystal approximants, expanding the understanding of topological magnons beyond specific compositions.

Findings

Discovery of doubly-degenerate nodal line network and planes.

Identification of nodal line network due to band inversions.

Analysis applicable to a wide range of materials with the same magnetic space group.

Abstract

Using a recently-established band representation analysis, we discover two distinct types of topological nodal magnons in the real-space antiferroic ordering of whirling spin arrangements in the Tb-based icosahedral quasicrystal 1/1 approximants, both of which originate from a composite band (co-)representation $A\uparrow P_In\bar{3}(24)$ and its constituent elementary band representations. The first type is doubly-degenerate nodal line network and nodal planes associated with two-dimensional irreducible band representation, while the second type is a nodal line network due to accidental band inversions. Since our analysis, which relies solely on magnetocrystalline symmetry, is valid for a wide range of materials and spin textures belonging to the same magnetic space group irrespective of composition, these findings offer new universal insights into the research of Tb-based quasicrystal approximants as well as a contribution to broadening the range of topological magnon-hosting materials.