Heat transport properties of clean spin ladders coupled to phonons: Umklapp scattering and drag

E. Boulat, P. Mehta, N. Andrei, E. Shimshoni, and A. Rosch
Phys. Rev. B 76, 214411 – Published 17 December 2007

Abstract

We study the low-temperature heat transport in clean two-leg spin-ladder compounds coupled to three-dimensional phonons. We argue that the very large heat conductivities observed in such systems can be traced back to the existence of approximate symmetries and corresponding weakly violated conservation laws of the effective (gapful) low-energy model, namely, pseudomomenta. Depending on the ratios of spin gaps and Debye energy and on the temperature, the magnetic contribution to the heat conductivity (κmag) can be positive or negative and can exhibit an activated or antiactivated behavior. In most regimes, κmag is dominated by the spin-phonon drag: the excitations of the two subsystems have almost the same drift velocity, and this allows for an estimate of the ratio κmagκph of the magnetic and phononic contributions to the heat conductivity.

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  • Received 10 October 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.76.214411

©2007 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

E. Boulat1,2, P. Mehta2, N. Andrei2, E. Shimshoni3, and A. Rosch4

  • 1Laboratoire MPQ, CNRS, Université Paris Diderot, 75205 Paris Cedex 13, France
  • 2Center for Material Theory, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA
  • 3Department of Math-Physics, University of Haifa at Oranim, Tivon 36006, Israel
  • 4Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne, 50937 Cologne, Germany

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Vol. 76, Iss. 21 — 1 December 2007

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