No Arabic abstract
We theoretically study magnon-phonon hybrid excitations (magnon-polarons) in two-dimensional antiferromagnets on a honeycomb lattice. With an in-plane Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) allowed from mirror symmetry breaking from phonons, we find non-trivial Berry curvature around the anti-crossing rings among magnon and both optical and acoustic phonon bands, which gives rise to finite Chern numbers. We show that the Chern numbers of the magnon-polaron bands can be manipulated by changing the magnetic field direction or strength. We evaluate the thermal Hall conductivity reflecting the non-trivial Berry curvatures of magnon-polarons and propose a valley Hall effect resulting from spin-induced chiral phonons as a possible experimental signature. Our study complements prior work on magnon-phonon hybridized systems without optical phonons and suggests possible applications in spin caloritronics with topological magnons and chiral phonons.
We theoretically investigate magnon-phonon hybrid excitations in two-dimensional ferromagnets. The bulk bands of hybrid excitations, which are referred to as magnon-polarons, are analytically shown to be topologically nontrivial, possessing finite Chern numbers. We also show that the Chern numbers of magnon-polaron bands and the number of band-crossing lines can be manipulated by an external magnetic field. For experiments, we propose to use the thermal Hall conductivity as a probe of the finite Berry curvatures of magnon-polarons. Our results show that a simple ferromagnet on a square lattice supports topologically nontrivial magnon-polarons, generalizing topological excitations in conventional magnetic systems.
In thin magnetic layers with structural inversion asymmetry and spin-orbit coupling, a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction arises at the interface. When a spin wave current ${bf j}_m$ flows in a system with a homogeneous magnetization {bf m}, this interaction produces an effective field-like torque on the form ${bf T}_{rm FL}propto{bf m}times({bf z}times{bf j}_m)$ as well as a damping-like torque, ${bf T}_{rm DL}propto{bf m}times[({bf z}times{bf j}_m)times{bf m}]$ in the presence of spin-wave relaxation (${bf z}$ is normal to the interface). These torques mediated by the magnon flow can reorient the time-averaged magnetization direction and display a number of similarities with the torques arising from the electron flow in a magnetic two dimensional electron gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling. This magnon-mediated spin-orbit torque can be efficient in the case of magnons driven by a thermal gradient.
We propose a realization of chiral Majorana modes propagating on the hinges of a 3D antiferromagnetic topological insulator, which was recently theoretically predicted and experimentally confirmed in the tetradymite-type $mathrm{MnBi_2Te_4}$-related ternary chalgogenides. These materials consist of ferromagnetically ordered 2D layers, whose magnetization direction alternates between neighboring layers, forming an antiferromagnetic order. Besides surfaces with a magnetic gap, there also exsist gapless surfaces with a single Dirac cone, which can be gapped out when proximity coupled to an $s$-wave superconductor. On the sharing edges between the two types of gapped surfaces, the chiral Majorana modes emerge. We further propose experimental signatures of these Majoana hinge modes in terms of two-terminal conductance measurements.
A flat band in fermionic system is a dispersionless single-particle state with a diverging effective mass and nearly zero group velocity. These flat bands are expected to support exotic properties in the ground state, which might be important for a wide range of promising physical phenomena. For many applications it is highly desirable to have such states in Dirac materials, but so far they have been reported only in non-magnetic Dirac systems. In this work we propose a realization of topologically protected spin-polarized flat bands generated by domain walls in planar magnetic topological insulators. Using first-principles material design we suggest a family of intrinsic antiferromagnetic topological insulators with an in-plane sublattice magnetization and a high Neel temperature. Such systems can host domain walls in a natural manner. For these materials, we demonstrate the existence of spin-polarized flat bands in the vicinity of the Fermi level and discuss their properties and potential applications.
Two-dimensional magnetic insulators can be promising hosts for topological magnons. In this study, we show that ABC-stacked honeycomb lattice multilayers with alternating Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) reveal a rich topological magnon phase diagram. Based on our bandstructure and Berry curvature calculations, we demonstrate jumps in the thermal Hall behavior that corroborate with topological phase transitions triggered by adjusting the DMI and interlayer coupling. We connect the phase diagram of generic multilayers to a bilayer and a trilayer system. We find an even-odd effect amongst the multilayers where the even layers show no jump in thermal Hall conductivity, but the odd layers do. We also observe the presence of topological proximity effect in our trilayer. Our results offer new schemes to manipulate Chern numbers and their measurable effects in topological magnonic systems.