Mapping the Temperature and Field-dependence of the Thermal Hall Conductivity in RuCl<sub>3</sub>

ORAL

Abstract

RuCl3 is thought to exhibit a strong Kitaev-type exchange interaction, but whether this interaction produces a spin liquid state with chiral Majorana edge modes is still unclear. Here, we present new measurements of the material’s thermal Hall conductivity down to He3 temperatures. We observe a large, temperature-dependent signal that clearly differs from the temperature-independent form expected for Majorana fermions. Using the quantitative framework established by Matsumoto and Murakami [1], we show that this temperature-dependence can be fit to a bosonic model and that this fit produces values that are consistent with known parameters for RuCl3.  How this result might be reconciled with other thermal transport reports will be discussed.  

[1] Matsumoto, R., Murakami, S. Phys. Rev. B 84, 184406 (2011). 

*This research was supported by the Department of Energy (DE-SC0017863), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's EPiQS initiative through grants GBMF4539, and by the US National Science Foundation (grant DMR 1420541).

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Presenters

  • Peter A Czajka

    • Princeton University

Authors

  • Peter A Czajka

    • Princeton University

  • Arnab Banerjee

    • Purdue University

  • Paula Lampen-Kelly

    • University of Tennessee
    • Oak Ridge National Lab

  • Jiaqiang Yan

    • Oak Ridge National Lab
    • Oak Ridge National Laboratory
    • ORNL

  • David G Mandrus

    • University of Tennessee
    • Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37916, USA

  • Stephen E Nagler

    • Neutron Scattering Division, Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA
    • Oak Ridge National Lab

  • Phuan Ong

    • Princeton University
    • Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA