Direct observation of two-dimensional magnons in atomically thin CrI3

Cenker, John; Huang, Bevin; Suri, Nishchay; Thijssen, Pearl; Miller, Aaron; Song, Tiancheng; Taniguchi, Takashi; Watanabe, Kenji; McGuire, Michael A.; Xiao, Di; Xu, Xiaodong

doi:10.1038/s41567-020-0999-1

Direct observation of two-dimensional magnons in atomically thin CrI₃

Journal Article · Mon Aug 10 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Nature Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-0999-1· OSTI ID:1760125

Cenker, John ^[1]; ^[1]; Suri, Nishchay ^[2]; ^[1]; Miller, Aaron ^[1]; ^[1]; Taniguchi, Takashi ^[3]; ^[3]; ^[4]; ^[2]; ^[1]

Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA (United States)
National Inst. for Materials Science, Tsukuba (Japan)
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Magnons are collective spin excitations in crystals with long-range magnetic order. The emergent van der Waals magnets provide a highly tunable platform to explore magnetic excitations in the two-dimensional limit with intriguing properties, manifesting from their honeycomb lattice structure and switchable magnetic configurations. Here, we report the direct observation of two-dimensional magnons through magneto-Raman spectroscopy with optical selection rules determined by the interplay between crystal symmetry, layer number and magnetic states in atomically thin CrI₃. In monolayers, we observe an acoustic magnon mode at ~0.3 meV. It has strict cross-circularly polarized selection rules locked to the magnetization direction that originates from the conservation of angular momentum of photons and magnons dictated by three-fold rotational symmetry. Additionally, we reveal optical magnon modes at ~17 meV. This mode is Raman silent in monolayers, but optically active in bilayers and bulk due to a relaxation of the parity criterion resulting from the layer index. In the layered antiferromagnetic states, we directly resolve two degenerate optical magnon modes with opposite angular momentum and conjugate optical selection rules. From these measurements, we quantitatively extract the spin-wave gap, magnetic anisotropy and intralayer and interlayer exchange constants, and establish two-dimensional magnets as a new platform for exploring magnon physics.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC05-00OR22725

OSTI ID:: 1760125

Journal Information:: Nature Physics, Journal Name: Nature Physics Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 17; ISSN 1745-2473

Publisher:: Nature Publishing Group (NPG)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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