English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The appearance of half-quantized thermal Hall conductivity in$\alpha$-RuCl$_3$ in the presence of in-plane magnetic fields has been taken asa strong evidence for Kitaev spin liquid. Apart from the quantization, theobserved sign structure of the thermal Hall conductivity is also consistentwith predictions from the exact solution of the Kitaev model. Namely, thethermal Hall conductivity changes sign when the field direction is reversedwith respect to the heat current, which is perpendicular to one of the threenearest neighbor bonds on the honeycomb lattice. On the other hand, it isalmost zero when the field is applied along the bond direction. Here, we showthat such a peculiar sign structure of the thermal Hall conductivity is ageneric property of the polarized state in the presence of in-planemagnetic-fields. In this case, thermal Hall effect arises from topologicalmagnons with finite Chern numbers and the sign structure follows from thesymmetries of the momentum space Berry curvature. Using a realistic spin modelwith bond-dependent interactions, we show that the thermal Hall conductivitycan have a magnitude comparable to that observed in the experiments. Hence thesign structure alone cannot make a strong case for Kitaev spin liquid. Thequantization at very low temperatures, however, will be a decisive test as themagnon contribution vanishes in the zero temperature limit.

Sign structure of thermal Hall conductivity for in-plane-field polarized Kitaev magnets