Magnetic vortex liquid and anomalous thermal Hall conductivity in frustrated magnets with bond-dependent interactions

Abstract

Recently, the observation of large thermal Hall conductivities in correlated insulators with no apparent broken symmetry have generated immense interest and debates on the underlying ground states. Here, considering frustrated magnets with bond-dependent interactions, which are realized in the so-called Kitaev materials, we theoretically demonstrate that a large thermal Hall conductivity can originate from a classical ground state without any magnetic order. We discover a novel liquid state of magnetic vortices, which are inhomogeneous spin textures embedded in the background of polarized spins, under out-of-plane magnetic fields. In the classical regime, different configurations of vortices form a degenerate manifold. We study the static and dynamical properties of the magnetic vortex liquid state at zero and finite temperatures. In particular, we show that the spin excitation spectrum resembles a continuum of nearly flat Chern bands, which ultimately leads to a large thermal Hall conductivity. Possible connections to experiments are discussed.

arXiv comment14+9 pages, 10+8 figures, 1 table

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Topological magnons for thermal Hall transport in frustrated magnets with bond-dependent interactions
• Beyond Kitaev physics in strong spin-orbit coupled magnets
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• Thermal Hall Effect in the Kitaev-Heisenberg System with Spin-Phonon Coupling
• Thermal spin dynamics of Kitaev magnets $-$ scattering continua and magnetic field induced phases within a stochastic semiclassical approach
• Topological phase diagrams of in-plane field polarized Kitaev magnets
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• A primer on Kitaev Model: Basic aspects, material realization, and recent experiments
• Classification of magnon thermal Hall systems based on U(1) to non-Abelian gauge fields