Exciton-induced magnons carrying orbital angular momentum in CrI3

Magnons are collective spin excitations that contain and transport spin angular momentum in magnetic materials. It has been suggested that they can also carry orbital angular momentum in analogy to the electronic motion around the nucleus. We explore the real-space topology of magnon wave-packets emanating from atomic-like excitons in the ferromagnetic insulator CrI3 and demonstrate the existence of orbital angular momentum in such wave-packets. We reveal that orbital angular momentum of magnons is nearly equal to their spin angular momentum and compensates the latter. This illustrates the existence of an unexplored internal angular momentum balance and demonstrates that the magnetization can be quenched without the need of angular momentum exchange with the lattice.