English

Magnon Spin-Momentum Locking: Various Spin Vortices and Dirac Magnons in Noncollinear Antiferromagnets

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2017-09-20 v4 Materials Science Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

We generalize the concept of the spin-momentum locking to magnonic systems and derive the formula to calculate the spin expectation value for one-magnon states of general two-body spin Hamiltonians. We give no-go conditions for magnon spin to be independent of momentum. As examples of the magnon spin-momentum locking, we analyze a one-dimensional antiferromagnet with the N\'eel order and two-dimensional kagome lattice antiferromagnets with the 120^\circ structure. We find that the magnon spin depends on its momentum even when the Hamiltonian has the zz-axis spin rotational symmetry, which can be explained in the context of a singular band point or a U(1)U(1) symmetry breaking. A spin vortex in momentum space generated in a kagome lattice antiferromagnet has the winding number Q=2Q=-2, while the typical one observed in topological insulator surface states is characterized by Q=+1Q=+1. A magnonic analogue of the surface states, the Dirac magnon with Q=+1Q=+1, is found in another kagome lattice antiferromagnet. We also derive the sum rule for QQ by using the Poincar\'e-Hopf index theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1702.02575,
  title  = {Magnon Spin-Momentum Locking: Various Spin Vortices and Dirac Magnons in Noncollinear Antiferromagnets},
  author = {Nobuyuki Okuma},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.02575},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

7 pages, 4 figures, Supplemental material is added