Physical Review Research (Jan 2020)

Intrinsic spin Nernst effect of magnons in a noncollinear antiferromagnet

  • Bo Li,
  • Shane Sandhoefner,
  • Alexey A. Kovalev

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.013079
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 1
p. 013079

Abstract

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We investigate the intrinsic magnon spin current in a noncollinear antiferromagnetic insulator. We introduce a definition of the magnon spin current in a noncollinear antiferromagnet and find that it is in general nonconserved, but for certain symmetries and spin polarizations the averaged effect of nonconserving terms can vanish. We formulate a general linear response theory for magnons in noncollinear antiferromagnets subject to a temperature gradient and analyze the effect of symmetries on the response tensor. We apply this theory to single-layer potassium iron jarosite KFe_{3}(OH)_{6}(SO_{4})_{2} and predict a measurable spin current response.