Spin Nernst Effect of Magnons in Collinear Antiferromagnets
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
2016-11-17 v3 Materials Science
Quantum Physics
Abstract
In a collinear antiferromagnet with easy-axis anisotropy, symmetry guarantees that the spin wave modes are doubly degenerate. The two modes carry opposite spin angular momentum and exhibit opposite chirality. Using a honeycomb antiferromagnet in the presence of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, we show that a longitudinal temperature gradient can drive the two modes to opposite transverse directions, realizing a spin Nernst effect of magnons with vanishing thermal Hall current. We find that magnons around the {\Gamma}-point and the K-point contribute oppositely to the transverse spin transport, and their competition leads to a sign change of the spin Nernst coefficient at finite temperature. Possible material candidates are discussed.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1606.01952,
title = {Spin Nernst Effect of Magnons in Collinear Antiferromagnets},
author = {Ran Cheng and Satoshi Okamoto and Di Xiao},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.01952},
year = {2016}
}