Magnon dressing by orbital excitations in ferromagnetic planes of K$_2$CuF$_4$ and LaMnO$_3$

Abstract

We show that even when spins and orbitals disentangle in the ground state, spin excitations are renormalized by the local tuning of $e_g$ orbitals in ferromagnetic planes of K$_2$CuF$_4$ and LaMnO$_3$. As a result, dressed spin excitations (magnons) obtained within the electronic model propagate as quasiparticles and their energy renormalization depends on momentum ${\vec k}$. Therefore magnons in spin-orbital systems go beyond the paradigm of the effective Heisenberg model with nearest neighbor spin exchange derived from the ground state --- spin-orbital entanglement in excited states predicts large magnon softening at the Brillouin zone boundary, and in case of LaMnO$_3$ the magnon energy at the $M=(\pi,\pi)$ point may be reduced by $\sim 45$\%. In contrast, simultaneously the stiffness constant near the Goldstone mode is almost unaffected. We elucidate physics behind magnon renormalization in spin-orbital systems and explain why long wavelength magnons are unrenormalized while simultaneously energies of short wavelength magnons are reduced by orbital fluctuations. In fact, the ${\vec k}$-dependence of the magnon energy is modified mainly by dispersion which originates from spin exchange between second neighbors along the cubic axes $a$ and $b$.