Consideration of Thermal Hall Effect in Undoped Cuprates

Abstract

A recent observation of thermal Hall effect of magnetic origin in underdoped cuprates calls for critical re-examination of low-energy magnetic dynamics in undoped antiferromagnetic compound on square lattice, where traditional, renormalized spin-wave theory was believed to work well. Using Holstein-Primakoff boson formalism, we find that magnon-based theories can lead to finite Berry curvature in the magnon band once the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya spin interaction is taken into account explicitly, but fail to produce non-zero thermal Hall conductivity. Assuming accidental doping by impurities and magnon scattering off of such impurity sites fails to predict skew scattering at the level of Born approximation. Local formation of skyrmion defects is also found incapable of generating magnon thermal Hall effect. Turning to spinon-based scenario, we write down a simple model by adding spin-dependent diagonal hopping to the well-known π-flux model of spinons. The resulting two-band model has Chern number in the band structure, and generates thermal Hall conductivity whose magnetic field and temperature dependences mimic closely the observed thermal Hall signals. In disclaimer, there is no firm microscopic basis of this model and we do not claim to have found an explanation of the data, but given the unexpected nature of the experimental observation, it is hoped this work could serve as a first step towards reaching some level of understanding.

published version

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• Extrinsic phonon thermal Hall transport from Hall viscosity
• Phonon Thermal Hall Conductivity from Scattering with Collective Fluctuations
• Observation of a Chiral Wave Function in Twofold Degenerate Quadruple Weyl System BaPtGe
• Phonon Hall viscosity from phonon-spinon interactions
• Unquantized thermal Hall effect in quantum spin liquids with spinon Fermi surfaces
• Reinvestigation of crystal symmetry and fluctuations in La${}_2$CuO${}_4$
• Chiral spin liquid and quantum phase diagram of spin-$1/2$ $J_1$-$J_2$-$J_{\chi }$ model on the square lattice
• Majorana chiral spin liquid in Mott insulating cuprates
• Magnon Hall effect in antiferromagnetic lattices
• Interplay between multi-spin and chiral spin interactions on triangular lattice
• Bad topological semimetals in layered honeycomb compounds
• Large Oscillatory Thermal Hall Effect in Kagome Metals
• Spin canting and lattice symmetry in La${}_2$CuO${}_4$
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• Floating topological phases
• Response of a strongly interacting spin-orbit coupling system to a Zeeman field