Thermal Hall effect in a van der Waals ferromagnet CrI3

Abstract: CrI3 is a prototypical van der Waals ferromagnet with a magnetic honeycomb lattice. Previous inelastic neutron scattering studies have suggested topological nature of its magnetic excitations with a magnon gap at the Dirac points, which are anticipated to give rise to magnon thermal Hall effect. Here we report thermal transport properties of CrI3 and show that the long-sought thermal Hall signal anticipated for topological magnons is fairly small. In contrast, we find that CrI3 exhibits an appreciable anomalous thermal Hall signal at lower temperature which may arise from magnon-phonon hybridization or magnon-phonon scattering. These findings are anticipated to stimulate further neutron scattering studies on CrI3 single crystal, which can shed light not only on the intrinsic nature of magnetic excitations but also on the magnon-phonon interaction.