Formulation of spin Nernst effect for spin-nonconserving insulating magnets

Abstract

The spin Nernst effect, an antisymmetric response of a spin current to a temperature gradient, has attracted attention as spin transport phenomenon arising from the topologically nontrivial band structure of carriers. This effect can occur not only in itinerant electron systems but also in localized electron systems that emerge due to electronic correlations. In such systems, elementary excitations behaving as bosons govern spin transport, and magnetic interactions originating from spin-orbit coupling can induce a topologically nontrivial band structure. However, such magnetic interactions can potentially break spin conservation, thereby preventing conventional spin currents from being conserved. In this study, starting from a general localized electron model, we formulate the spin Nernst effect in terms of a conserved spin current that remains applicable even in spin-nonconserving systems. To address the torque term appearing in the conserved spin current, we adopt semiclassical theory and derive an expression for the spin Nernst coefficient for bosonic systems. This coefficient consists of two terms originating from the Berry curvature and the quantum metric, which are distinctly different from the spin Berry curvature obtained in an approach that neglects the torque term. We apply our framework to two specific quantum spin models, the Kitaev-Heisenberg and Shastry-Sutherland models, and calculate the temperature dependence of the spin Nernst coefficient. We find that this quantity significantly differs from that obtained by neglecting the torque term in both models. Furthermore, we clarify that the impact of the torque term on the spin Nernst effect strongly depends on the model parameters, suggesting that our formulation based on the conserved spin current is essential for understanding this effect in insulating magnets.