Phonon Hall Viscosity and the Intrinsic Thermal Hall Effect of $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$

Abstract

The thermal Hall effect has been observed in a wide variety of magnetic insulators, yet its origins remains controversial. While some studies attribute the effect to intrinsic mechanism, such as heat carriers with Berry curvature, others propose extrinsic mechanisms, such as heat carriers scattering off crystal defects. Even the nature of the heat carriers is unknown: magnons, phonons, and fractionalized spin excitations have all been proposed. Resolving these issues is essential for the study of quantum spin liquids, and particularly for $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$, where a quantized thermal Hall effect has been attributed to Majorana edge modes. Here, we use ultrasonic measurements of the acoustic Faraday effect to demonstrate that the phonons in $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$ have Hall viscosity -- a non-dissipative viscosity that rotates phonon polarizations and deflects phonon heat currents. We show that phonon Hall viscosity produces an intrinsic thermal Hall effect that quantitatively accounts for a significant fraction of the measured thermal Hall effect in $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$: the thermal Hall effect in $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$ is due to phonons \textit{and} it is intrinsic. More broadly, we demonstrate that the acoustic Faraday effect is a powerful tool for detecting phonon Hall viscosity and the associated phonon Berry curvature, offering a new way to uncover and study exotic states of matter that elude conventional experiments.