Theory of Intrinsic Phonon Thermal Hall Effect in α-RuCl₃

2024/06/30 by Ramesh Dhakal, David A. S. Kaib, Dhakal, Ramesh +8
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2407.00660

openalex publication_date 2024/06/30 · openalex created_date 2024/07/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We apply a recently developed first-principles based approach for treating generic spin-phonon couplings in materials with strong spin-orbit coupling to study α-RuCl₃. Of particular focus is the potential for this material to exhibit a phonon thermal Hall effect induced by spin-phonon interactions. We find that spin-orbit coupling significantly enriches the form of these interactions, and imbues them with chirality that is conducive to generating finite phonon Berry curvatures. We show that this leads to a phonon thermal Hall effect that qualitatively reproduces the measured field dependence of κ_xy without requiring a field-induced spin liquid.

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