Heat conduction in magnetic insulators via hybridization of acoustic phonons and spin-flip excitations

  • Christopher A. Pocs
  • , Ian A. Leahy
  • , Jie Xing
  • , Eun Sang Choi
  • , Athena S. Sefat
  • , Michael Hermele
  • , Minhyea Lee

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present a comprehensive study on the longitudinal magnetothermal transport in a paramagnetic effective spin-1/2 magnetic insulator CsYbSe2, by introducing a minimal model requiring only Zeeman splitting and magnetoelastic coupling. We use it to argue that hybridized excitations-formed from acoustic phonons and localized spin-flip-excitations across the Zeeman gap of the crystal electric field ground doublet-are responsible for a nonmonotonic field dependence of longitudinal thermal conductivity. Beyond highlighting a starring role for phonons, our results raise the prospect of universal magnetothermal transport phenomena in paramagnetic insulators that originate from simple features shared across many systems.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberL022007
JournalPhysical Review Research
Volume7
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2025

Funding

Acknowledgments. We thank Y. Matsuda and Y. Kasahara for helpful discussions. Work at University of Colorado Boulder was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES) under Award No. DE-SC0021377 (experimental work by C.A.P., I.A.L., and M.L.) and Award No. DE-SC0014415 (theoretical work by M.H.). Work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. A portion of this work was performed at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which is supported by the National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement No. DMR-1644779 and No. DMR-2128556, and the State of Florida.

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