Theory of phonon-magnon hybridization and angular momentum in CrI$_3$ and CrBr$_3$

Abstract

In magnetic materials angular momentum can be mediated by different carriers, including electrons, magnons, and phonons. The magnons can interact with circularly polarized phonons which are close in energy, provided specific symmetry conditions are met. If the interaction is strong enough the phonons and magnons shift in frequency and start to mix to form hybrid magneto-elastic quasi-particles. In this paper, we develop a constrained Hamiltonian framework which incorporates hybrid stiffness matrices and Berry curvatures. We quantify the degree of hybridization between phonons and magnons (up to 8% in CrI$_3$ and 25% in CrBr$_3$) using a decomposition of the total energy, which is a generalization of the norm decomposition for atomic contributions to phonons used in the literature. We also explore how the total angular momentum is conserved but shared between the phononic and magnonic subsystems upon hybridization.