Emergent SU(3) magnons and thermal Hall effect in the antiferromagnetic skyrmion lattice

Complexity of quantum phases of matter is often understood by the underlying gauge structures, as was recognized by the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ and U(1) gauge theory description of spin liquid in frustrated magnets. Anomalous Hall effect of conducting electrons can intrisically arise from U(1) gauges expressing the spatial modulation of ferromagnetic moments or from SU(2) gauges representing the spin-orbit coupling effect. Similarly, in insulating ferro and antiferromagnets, the magnon excitations can contribute to anomalous transports by feeling the U(1) and SU(2) gauges arising from the features of ordered moments or interactions. In this work, we report the emergent higher rank SU(3) gauge structure in the magnon transport based on the thermal conductivity measurements of MnSc$_2$S$_4$ in an applied field up to 14\,T. The thermal Hall coefficient takes a substantial value when the material enters a three-sublattice antiferromagnetic skyrmion phase, which is confirmed by the large-scale spin wave theory. The excited magnons are dressed with SU(3) gauge field, which is a mixture of three species of U(1) gauge fields originating from the slowly varying magnetic moments on these sublattices.

Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures