paper

Sizable suppression of magnon Hall effect by magnon damping in CrGeTe

arXiv:2304.04922 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.107.184434

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) Heisenberg honeycomb ferromagnets are expected to have interesting topological magnon effects as their magnon dispersion can have Dirac points. The Dirac points are gapped with finite second nearest neighbor Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, providing nontrivial Berry curvature with finite magnon Hall effect. Yet, it is unknown how the topological properties are affected by magnon damping. We report the thermal Hall effect in CrGeTe, an insulating 2D honeycomb ferromagnet with a large Dirac magnon gap and significant magnon damping. Interestingly, the thermal Hall conductivity in CrGeTe shows the coexisting phonon and magnon contributions. Using an empirical two-component model, we successfully estimate the magnon contribution separate from the phonon part, revealing that the magnon Hall conductivity was 20 times smaller than the theoretical calculation. Finally, we suggest that such considerable suppression in the magnon Hall conductivity is due to the magnon damping effect in CrGeTe.

15 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B