Topological magnon nodal lines and absence of magnon spin Nernst effect in layered collinear antiferromagnets

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics - 31 Caroline St. N., Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada

Received: 28 November 2018
Accepted: 28 January 2019

Abstract

We propose the existence of a symmetry-protected topological Dirac nodal-line (DNL) magnonic phase in layered honeycomb collinear antiferromagnets even in the presence of spin-orbit Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. We show that the magnon spin Nernst effect, predicted to occur in strictly two-dimensional (2D) honeycomb collinear antiferromagnets cancels out in the layered honeycomb collinear antiferromagnets. In other words, the magnon spin Nernst effect in each 2D antiferromagnetic layer cancels out the succeeding layer. Hence, the Berry curvature vanishes in the entire Brillouin zone due to the combination of time-reversal and space-inversion symmetry. However, upon symmetry breaking by an external magnetic field, we show that a non-vanishing Berry curvature and Chern number protected topological magnon bands are induced in the non-collinear spin structure. This leads to an experimentally accessible magnon thermal Hall effect in the symmetry-broken topological DNL magnonic phase of layered honeycomb antiferromagnets. We propose that the current predicted results can be experimentally investigated in the layered honeycomb antiferromagnets CaMn₂Sb₂, BaNi₂V₂O₈, and Bi₃Mn₄O₁₂(NO₃).