Sign structure of thermal Hall conductivity for in-plane-field polarized Kitaev magnets

Abstract

The appearance of half-quantized thermal Hall conductivity in $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$ in the presence of in-plane magnetic fields has been taken as a strong evidence for Kitaev spin liquid. Apart from the quantization, the observed sign structure of the thermal Hall conductivity is also consistent with predictions from the exact solution of the Kitaev model. Namely, the thermal Hall conductivity changes sign when the field direction is reversed with respect to the heat current, which is perpendicular to one of the three nearest neighbor bonds on the honeycomb lattice. On the other hand, it is almost zero when the field is applied along the bond direction. Here, we show that such a peculiar sign structure of the thermal Hall conductivity is a generic property of the polarized state in the presence of in-plane magnetic-fields. In this case, thermal Hall effect arises from topological magnons with finite Chern numbers and the sign structure follows from the symmetries of the momentum space Berry curvature. Using a realistic spin model with bond-dependent interactions, we show that the thermal Hall conductivity can have a magnitude comparable to that observed in the experiments. Hence the sign structure alone cannot make a strong case for Kitaev spin liquid. The quantization at very low temperatures, however, will be a decisive test as the magnon contribution vanishes in the zero temperature limit.

6+2 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (54)

• The planar thermal Hall conductivity in the Kitaev magnet α-RuCl3
• Field-induced intermediate ordered phase and anisotropic interlayer interactions in $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$
• Topological magnons for thermal Hall transport in frustrated magnets with bond-dependent interactions
• Thermal Hall effects in quantum magnets
• Electronic and magnetic properties of the RuX${}_3$ (X=Cl, Br, I) family: Two siblings -- and a cousin?
• Planar Thermal Hall Effects in Kitaev Spin Liquid Candidate Na2Co2TeO6
• Majorana-fermion origin of the planar thermal Hall effect in the Kitaev magnet $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$
• Significant thermal Hall effect in the 3$d$ cobalt Kitaev system $N{a}_{2}C{o}_{2}Te{O}_6$
• Functional renormalization group study of the Kitaev-$\Gamma$ model on the honeycomb lattice and emergent incommensurate magnetic correlations
• Symmetry-based requirement for the measurement of electrical and thermal Hall conductivity under an in-plane magnetic field
• Kitaev Quantum Spin Liquids
• Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of Majorana zero modes in a Kitaev spin liquid
• Planar thermal Hall effect from phonons in a Kitaev candidate material
• Field-angle dependence of thermal Hall conductivity in magnetically ordered Kitaev-Heisenberg system
• Exchange interactions in $d^5$ Kitaev materials: From Na${}_2$IrO${}_3$ to $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$
• Tunable topological magnon-polaron states and anomalous Hall phenomena in two-dimensional ferromagnetic insulators
• Dynamical anyon generation in Kitaev honeycomb non-Abelian spin liquids
• Flavor-wave theory with quasiparticle damping at finite temperatures: Application to chiral edge modes in the Kitaev model
• Thermal interferometry of anyons in spin liquids
• Defect-Induced Low-Energy Majorana Excitations in the Kitaev Magnet $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$
• Thermal Hall effect incorporating magnon damping in localized spin systems
• Spin excitation continuum to topological magnon crossover and thermal Hall conductivity in Kitaev magnets
• Symmetry Analysis of Tensors in the Honeycomb Lattice of Edge-Sharing Octahedra
• Scattering phenomena for spin transport in Kitaev spin liquid
• Dynamics of fractionalized mean-field theories: consequences for Kitaev materials
• Exchange striction induced thermal Hall effect in van der Waals antiferromagnet MnPS${}_3$
• Realization and detection of Kitaev quantum spin liquid with Rydberg atoms
• Planar thermal Hall effect from phonons in cuprates
• Magnon Condensation in Dimerized Antiferromagnets with Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Sign Changes in Heat, Spin, and Orbital Magnon Transport Coefficients in Kitaev Ferromagnets
• Kitaev-Heisenberg model on the star lattice: From chiral Majorana fermions to chiral triplons
• Topological phase diagrams of in-plane field polarized Kitaev magnets
• Topological magnons in Kitaev magnets with finite Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction at high field
• Thermal Hall conductivity near field-suppressed magnetic order in a Kitaev-Heisenberg model
• Dynamical response theory of interacting Majorana fermions and its application to generic Kitaev quantum spin liquids in a field
• Topological phase transitions and thermal Hall effect in a noncollinear spin texture
• Successive topological phase transitions in two distinct spin-flop phases on the honeycomb lattice
• Local spin-flip transitions induced by magnetic quantum impurities in two-dimensional magnets
• Chiral excitations and the intermediate-field spin-liquid regime in the Kitaev magnet $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$
• Complex orders and chirality in the classical Kitaev-$\Gamma$ model
• Anisotropic in-plane heat transport of Kitaev magnet Na${}_2$Co${}_2$TeO${}_6$
• Contrasting magnetothermal conductivity in sibling Co-based honeycomb-lattice antiferromagnets
• Anyon polarons as a window into competing phases of the Kitaev honeycomb model under a Zeeman field
• Eleven Competing Phases in the Heisenberg-Gamma (J$\Gamma$) Ladder
• Assembling Kitaev honeycomb spin liquids from arrays of 1D symmetry protected topological phases
• Formulation of spin Nernst effect for spin-nonconserving insulating magnets
• Extrinsic contribution to bosonic thermal Hall transport
• Electric polarization near vortices in the extended Kitaev model
• Angular-Dependent Thermal Hall Effect in a Honeycomb Magnet: Disentangling Kitaev and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interactions
• Classification of magnon thermal Hall systems based on U(1) to non-Abelian gauge fields
• Dynamical Response of the Kitaev Spin Liquid under Third-Nearest-Neighbor Heisenberg Interaction
• The field-angle anisotropy of proximate Kitaev systems under an in-plane magnetic field
• Nesting instability of gapless U(1) spin liquids with spinon Fermi pockets in two dimensions
• Time-domain anyon interferometry in Kitaev honeycomb spin liquids and beyond