Anisotropic magnon damping by zero-temperature quantum fluctuations in ferromagnetic CrGeTe3

Lebing Chen, Chengjie Mao, Jae Ho Chung, Matthew B. Stone, Alexander I. Kolesnikov, Xiaoping Wang, Naoki Murai, Bin Gao, Olivier Delaire, Pengcheng Dai

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    20 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Spin and lattice are two fundamental degrees of freedom in a solid, and their fluctuations about the equilibrium values in a magnetic ordered crystalline lattice form quasiparticles termed magnons (spin waves) and phonons (lattice waves), respectively. In most materials with strong spin-lattice coupling (SLC), the interaction of spin and lattice induces energy gaps in the spin wave dispersion at the nominal intersections of magnon and phonon modes. Here we use neutron scattering to show that in the two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals honeycomb lattice ferromagnetic CrGeTe3, spin waves propagating within the 2D plane exhibit an anomalous dispersion, damping, and breakdown of quasiparticle conservation, while magnons along the c axis behave as expected for a local moment ferromagnet. These results indicate the presence of dynamical SLC arising from the zero-temperature quantum fluctuations in CrGeTe3, suggesting that the observed in-plane spin waves are mixed spin and lattice quasiparticles fundamentally different from pure magnons and phonons.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number4037
    JournalNature communications
    Volume13
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2022 Dec

    Bibliographical note

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2022, The Author(s).

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General Chemistry
    • General Biochemistry,Genetics and Molecular Biology
    • General Physics and Astronomy

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