Topological magnon bands in the flux state of Shastry-Sutherland lattice model

Abstract

We investigate low energy magnon excitations above the non-collinear flux state and non-coplanar canted flux state in a Heisenberg anti-ferromagnet with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction~(DMI) on a Sashtry-Sutherland lattice.While previous studies have shown the presence of topological magnetic excitation in the dimer and ferromagnetic phases on the Shastry-Sutherland lattice, our results establish the non-trivial topology of magnons in the anti-ferromagnetic flux and canted flux states. Our results uncover the existence of a multitude of topological phase transitions in the magnon sector -- evidenced by the changing Chern numbers of the single magnon bands -- as the Hamiltonian parameters are varied, even when the ground state remains unchanged. The thermal Hall conductivity is calculated and its derivative is shown to exhibit a logarithmic divergence at the phase transitions, independent of the type of band touching involved. This may provide a useful means to identify the energy at which the transition occurs. Finally, we propose the way to realize the studied model in a practical material.