Anomalous thermoelectric and thermal Hall effects in irradiated altermagnets

Abstract: In this study, we show that a $d$-wave altermagnet can be transformed into a Chern insulator by irradiating it with elliptically polarized light from a high-frequency photon beam. We further explore the intrinsic anomalous thermoelectric and thermal Hall effects in light-irradiated altermagnets. At extremely low temperatures, the thermoelectric Hall coefficient, which exhibits a linear temperature dependence for the thermoelectric Hall conductivity, vanishes within the gapped region between the conduction and valence bands. However, it displays peaks and dips at the boundaries of the gap, suggesting that thermoelectric Hall conductivity can be used to probe the bandwidth. Similarly, the low-temperature thermal Hall coefficient, which also shows a linear temperature dependence for the thermal Hall conductivity, becomes quantized in the gapped region between the conduction and valence bands. This quantization indicates that thermal Hall conductivity can serve as a probe for the topological properties of the system.