No Arabic abstract
$mathsf{Mn_{3}Sn}$ has recently attracted considerable attention as a magnetic Weyl semimetal exhibiting concomitant transport anomalies at room temperature. The topology of the electronic bands, their relation to the magnetic ground state and their nonzero Berry curvature lie at the heart of the problem. The examination of the full magnetic Hamiltonian reveals otherwise hidden aspects of these unusual physical properties. Here, we report the full spin wave spectra of $mathsf{Mn_{3}Sn}$ measured over a wide momentum - energy range by the inelastic neutron scattering technique. Using a linear spin wave theory, we determine a suitable magnetic Hamiltonian which not only explains the experimental results but also stabilizes the low-temperature helical phase, consistent with our DFT calculations. The effect of this helical ordering on topological band structures is further examined using a tight-binding method, which confirms the elimination of Weyl points in the helical phase. Our work provides a rare example of the intimate coupling between the electronic and spin degrees of freedom for a magnetic Weyl semimetal system.
Mn$_{3}$Sn is a non-collinear antiferromagnet which displays a large anomalous Hall effect at room temperature. It is believed that the principal contribution to its anomalous Hall conductivity comes from Berry curvature. Moreover, dc transport and photoemission experiments have confirmed that Mn$_{3}$Sn may be an example of a time-reversal symmetry breaking Weyl semimetal. Due to a small, but finite moment in the room temperature inverse triangular spin structure, which allows control of the Hall current with external field, this material has garnered much interest for next generation memory devices and THz spintronics applications. In this work, we report a THz range study of oriented Mn$_{3}$Sn thin films as a function of temperature. At low frequencies we found the optical conductivity can be well described by a single Drude oscillator. The plasma frequency is strongly suppressed in a temperature dependent fashion as one enters the 260 K helical phase. This may be associated with partial gapping of the Fermi surfaces that comes from breaking translational symmetry along the c-axis. The scattering rate shows quadratic temperature dependence below 200 K, highlighting the possible important role of interactions in this compound.
The non-collinear antiferromagnetic (AFM) structure makes Mn3Sn exhibit exotic properties. At present, it has been found that both the hydrostatic pressure and the strain introduced by interstitial N atoms have a great influence on this magnetic structure. Here, the effect of the residual strain (RS) on it is investigated. AC and DC magnetic measurement results suggest that Mn3Sn without RS has the non-collinear AFM structure only in the temperature range of 285 K to 400 K; while Mn3Sn with RS has a non-coplanar AFM structure in the entire temperature range from 5 K to 400 K. Both anomalous Hall effect and topological Hall effect appears in Mn3Sn with RS, supporting the anticipated non-coplanar AFM structure. Our findings point out a method to realize the chiral non-coplanar AFM structure through the engineering, thereby providing a path for the construction of topological antiferromagnets.
We report detailed magneto-transport measurements on single crystals of the magnetic Weyl semi-metal Co$_{3}$Sn$_{2}$S$_{2}$. Recently a large anomalous Hall effect and chiral anomaly have been observed in this material which have been suggested to be related to the large Berry curvature between the Weyl points (Liu et al., Nature Physics (2018).). Another effect expected to result from the topological band structure of magnetic Weyl materials is the planar Hall effect (PHE). In this work we report observation of this intrinsic effect in single crystals of Co$_{3}$Sn$_{2}$S$_{2}$. Crucially, the PHE is observed for temperature $T leq 74$~K which is much smaller than the ferromagnetic ordering temperature $T_c = 175$~K@. Together with the large anomalous Hall conductivity, this further demonstrates the Topological character of Co$_3$Sn$_2$S$_2$.
We have studied the anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in strained thin films of the frustrated antiferromagnet Mn$_{3}$NiN. The AHE does not follow the conventional relationships with magnetization or longitudinal conductivity and is enhanced relative to that expected from the magnetization in the antiferromagnetic state below $T_{mathrm{N}} = 260$,K. This enhancement is consistent with origins from the non-collinear antiferromagnetic structure, as the latter is closely related to that found in Mn$_{3}$Ir and Mn$_{3}$Pt where a large AHE is induced by the Berry curvature. As the Berry phase induced AHE should scale with spin-orbit coupling, yet larger AHE may be found in other members of the chemically flexible Mn$_{3}A$N structure.
We report a comprehensive neutron scattering study on the spin excitations in the magnetic Weyl semimetal Co$_3$Sn$_2$S$_2$ with quasi-two-dimensional structure. Both in-plane and out-of-plane dispersions of the spin waves are revealed in the ferromagnetic state, similarly dispersive but damped spin excitations persist into the paramagnetic state. The effective exchange interactions have been estimated by a semi-classical Heisenberg model to consistently reproduce the experimental $T_C$ and spin stiffness. However, a full spin wave gap below $E_g=2.3$ meV is observed at $T=4$ K, much larger than the estimated magnetic anisotropy energy ($sim0.6$ meV), while its temperature dependence indicates a significant contribution from the Weyl fermions. These results suggest that Co$_3$Sn$_2$S$_2$ is a three-dimensional correlated system with large spin stiffness, and the low-energy spin dynamics could interplay with the topological electron states.