2017/01/31 by S. A. Owerre
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Algebraic structures and combinatorial models #Condensed matter physics #Physics #Topological Materials and Phenomena #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/117/37006
published as EPL (Europhys. Lett.) 117, 37006 (2017) · 8 pages + supplemental material, 8 figures. Updated version with Chern number computation
openalex publication_date 2017/02/01 · arxiv created 2018/10/19 · arxiv updated 2018/10/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In this letter, we identify a noncoplanar chiral spin texture on the distorted kagomé-lattice antiferromagnets induced by the presence of a magnetic field applied perpendicular to the distorted kagomé plane. The noncoplanar chiral spin texture has a nonzero scalar spin chirality similar to a chiral quantum spin liquid with broken time-reversal symmetry. In the noncoplanar regime we observe nontrivial topological magnetic excitations and thermal Hall response through the emergent field-induced scalar spin chirality in contrast to collinear ferromagnets in which the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) spin-orbit interaction is the driving force. Our results shed light on recent observation of thermal Hall conductivity in distorted kagomé volborthite at nonzero magnetic field with no signal of DM spin-orbit interaction, and the results also apply to other distorted kagomé antiferromagnets such as vesignieite and edwardsite.