Impurity-induced phonon thermal Hall effect in the antiferromagnetic phase of Sr2IrO4

Abstract

A thermal Hall effect is observed in an increasing number of insulators often attributed to phonons, but the underlying mechanism is in most cases unknown. A coupling of phonons to spins has been invoked and scattering of phonons by impurities or defects has been proposed, but there is no systematic evidence to support either scenario. Here we present a study on the effect of adding Rh impurities to the antiferromagnetic insulator Sr2IrO4, substituting for the spin-carrying Ir atoms. We find that adding small concentrations of Rh impurities increases the thermal Hall conductivity dramatically, but adding enough Rh to suppress the magnetic order eventually decreases the thermal Hall conductivity until it nearly vanishes. We conclude that the thermal Hall effect in this material is caused by the scattering of phonons by impurities embedded within a magnetic environment.

References in corpus (8)

• Observation of the Magnon Hall Effect
• Giant thermal Hall conductivity from neutral excitations in the pseudogap phase of cuprates
• The planar thermal Hall conductivity in the Kitaev magnet α-RuCl3
• Thermal Hall Effect of Spins in a Paramagnet
• Spin-orbit tuned metal-insulator transitions in single-crystal Sr2Ir1-xRhxO4 (0\leqx\leq1)
• The phonon thermal Hall angle in black phosphorus
• Resonant thermal Hall effect of phonons coupled to dynamical defects
• Thermal Hall conductivity of electron-doped cuprates

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Thermal Hall effects in quantum magnets
• Planar thermal Hall effect from phonons in a Kitaev candidate material
• Magnetic field control over the axialness of Higgs modes in charge-density wave compounds
• Phonon thermal Hall effect in non-magnetic Y${}_2$Ti${}_2$O${}_7$
• Planar thermal Hall effect from phonons in cuprates
• Role of magnetic ions in the thermal Hall effect of the paramagnetic insulator TmVO${}_4$
• Abnormally enhanced Hall Lorenz number in the magnetic Weyl semimetal NdAlSi
• Thermal Hall conductivity of semimetallic graphite dominated by ambipolar phonon drag
• Phonon Thermal Hall Effect: The Roles of Disorder, Annealing, and Metallic Contacts
• Field-Angle Dependence of Phonon Thermal Hall Effect in Na2X2TeO6 (X = Co, Zn)
• Intrinsic thermal Hall effect of optical phonons enhanced by discrete rotational symmetry