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Planar Thermal Hall Effect from Phonons in Cuprates

Lu Chen1,*, Léna Le Roux1, Gaël Grissonnanche1,2, Marie-Eve Boulanger1, Steven Thériault1, Ruixing Liang3,4, D. A. Bonn3,4, W. N. Hardy3,4, S. Pyon5,6 et al.

T. Takayama5,7, H. Takagi5,7,8,9, Ke-Jun Xu10,11,12, Zhi-Xun Shen10,11,12, and Louis Taillefer1,4,†

  • *Contact author: lu.chen@usherbrooke.ca
  • †Contact author: louis.taillefer@usherbrooke.ca
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Phys. Rev. X 14, 041011 – Published 11 October, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.14.041011

Abstract

A surprising “planar” thermal Hall effect, whereby the field is parallel to the current, has recently been observed in a few magnetic insulators; this effect has been attributed to exotic excitations such as Majorana fermions or chiral magnons. Here, we investigate the possibility of a planar thermal Hall effect in three different cuprate materials, in which the conventional thermal Hall conductivity κxy (with an out-of-plane field perpendicular to the current) is dominated by either electrons or phonons. Our measurements show that the planar κxy from electrons in cuprates is zero, as expected from the absence of a Lorentz force in the planar configuration. By contrast, we observe a sizable planar κxy in those samples where the thermal Hall response is due to phonons, even though it should, in principle, be forbidden by the high crystal symmetry. Our findings call for a careful reexamination of the mechanisms responsible for the phonon thermal Hall effect in insulators.

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Popular Summary

The conventional thermal Hall effect—the thermal analog of the electrical Hall effect—is a powerful technique to probe neutral excitations in various quantum materials. Typically, the effect describes the emergence of a heat current perpendicular to a thermal gradient after the introduction of an orthogonal magnetic field. Surprisingly, recent work has shown a nonzero thermal Hall effect even when the magnetic field is parallel to the gradient—i.e., in the “planar configuration.” So far, this planar thermal Hall effect has been studied in only two Kitaev magnets, where there is debate on what is contributing to the signal. To better understand the nature of this effect, we carry out a systematic study of it in three cuprates.

In these cuprates, the origin of the conventional thermal Hall effect has already been attributed to phonons in insulating samples at low dopings and electrons in metallic samples at high dopings. Our measurements show that planar thermal Hall conductivity from electrons is zero, as expected. By contrast, in samples where the conventional effect is contributed entirely by phonons, we detect a large planar signal despite the high crystal symmetry. We propose that an extrinsic mechanism (involving impurities, defects, or antiferromagnetic domains) produces a local symmetry breaking that allows this planar thermal Hall signal to emerge.

The mechanism responsible for the phonon thermal Hall effect is still unsolved, even in the conventional configuration. Our results reveal a new facet of the phonon thermal Hall effect, namely that it can occur in a planar configuration. We expect this work to contribute to the theoretical understanding of the surprising and still baffling Hall effect of phonons.

Article Text

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. X 14, 041011– Published 11 October, 2024
  • Received 20 October 2023
  • Revised 22 April 2024
  • Accepted 9 August 2024
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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