Thermal Hall effect incorporating magnon damping in localized spin systems

Abstract: We propose a theory for thermal Hall transport mediated by magnons to address the impact of their damping resulting from magnon-magnon interactions in insulating magnets. This phenomenon is anticipated to be particularly significant in systems characterized by strong quantum fluctuations, exemplified by spin-1/2 systems. Employing a nonlinear flavor-wave theory, we analyze a general model for localized electron systems and develop a formulation for thermal conductivity based on a perturbation theory, utilizing bosonic Green's functions with a nonzero self-energy. We derive the expression of the thermal Hall conductivity incorporating magnon damping. To demonstrate the applicability of the obtained representation, we adopt it to two $S=1/2$ quantum spin models on a honeycomb lattice. In calculations for these systems, we make use of the self-consistent imaginary Dyson equation approach at finite temperatures for evaluating the magnon damping rate. In both systems, the thermal Hall conductivity is diminished due to the introduction of magnon damping over a wide temperature range. This effect arises due to the smearing of magnon spectra with nonzero Berry curvatures. We also discuss the relation to the damping of chiral edge modes of magnons. Our formulation can be applied to various localized electron systems as we begin with a general Hamiltonian for these systems. Our findings shed light on a new aspect of topological magnonics emergent from many-body effects and will stimulate further investigations on the impact of magnon damping on topological phenomena.