Publications

Published

Schematic of the experimental setup for measuring the nonlinear anomalous thermal Hall effect. Here, the dark pink color shows the hot end of the sample, while the light blue color shows the cold end. This sets a temperature gradient along the x direction. We probe the nonlinear thermal Hall response along the y (Hall) and x (longitudinal) directions.

Harsh Varshney, Kamal Das, Pankaj Bhalla, and Amit Agarwal

We investigate the second-order nonlinear electronic thermal  transport induced by temperature gradient. We develop the quantum kinetic theory framework to describe thermal transport in the presence of a temperature gradient. Using this, we predict an intrinsic scattering time-independent nonlinear thermal current in addition to the known extrinsic nonlinear Drude and Berry curvature dipole contributions. We show that the intrinsic thermal current is determined by the band geometric quantities and is non-zero only in systems where both the space inversion and time-reversal symmetries are broken. We employ the developed theory to study the thermal response in tilted massive Dirac systems. We show that besides the different scattering time dependents, the various current contributions have distinct temperature dependencies in the low-temperature limit. Our systematic and comprehensive theory for nonlinear thermal transport paves the way for future theoretical and experimental studies on intrinsic thermal responses.

Origin of the different conductivity contributions in the quantum kinetic theory framework and their scattering time dependence. The off-diagonal terms of the density matrix capture the impact of inter-band coherence. All band geometry-induced transport responses arise from the off-diagonal components of the linear or nonlinear density matrix.

Harsh Varshney, Rohit Mukherjee,  Arijit Kundu, and Amit Agarwal

We present a systematic study of the nonlinear thermal Hall responses in bosonic systems using the quantum kinetic theory framework. We demonstrate the existence of an intrinsic nonlinear boson thermal current, arising from the quantum metric which is a wavefunction dependent band geometric quantity. In contrast to the nonlinear Drude and nonlinear anomalous Hall contributions, the intrinsic nonlinear thermal conductivity is independent of the scattering timescale. We demonstrate the dominance of this intrinsic thermal Hall response in topological magnons in a two-dimensional ferromagnetic honeycomb lattice without Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Our findings highlight the significance of band geometry induced nonlinear thermal transport and motivate experimental probe of the intrinsic nonlinear thermal Hall response with implications for quantum magnonics.

Preprints

Schematic for 2D planar Hall effect (2DPHE). Layered 2D materials host hidden planar Berry curvature (Ω_planar) and planar orbital magnetic moment (m_planar) arising from inter-layer tunneling. The Ω_planar and m_planar combine with the in-plane electric and magnetic field to induce a longitudinal and transverse current in the 2D plane.

Koushik Ghorai, Sunit Das, Harsh Varshney, and Amit Agarwal

The planar Hall effect in 3D systems is an effective probe for their Berry curvature, topology, and electronic properties. However, the Berry curvature-induced conventional planar Hall effect is forbidden in 2D systems as the out-of-plane Berry curvature cannot couple to the band velocity of the electrons moving in the 2D plane. Here, we demonstrate a unique 2D planar Hall effect (2DPHE) originating from the hidden planar components of the Berry curvature and orbital magnetic moment in quasi-2D materials. We identify all planar band geometric contributions to 2DPHE and classify their crystalline symmetry restrictions. Using gated bilayer graphene as an example, we show that in addition to capturing the hidden band geometric effects, 2DPHE is also sensitive to the Lifshitz transitions. Our work motivates further exploration of hidden planar band geometry-induced 2DPHE and related transport phenomena for innovative applications.

Outreach Activities

4) Attended "Recent Progress in Graphene and 2D materials Research 2023" and presented a poster titled "Quantum kinetic theory of nonlinear thermal currents". 

3) Attended PQMS 2023 summer school in NISER, Bhubaneshwar.

2) Presented a poster titled, " Quantum kinetic theory of nonlinear thermal currents"  at IIT Kanpur during the Research Scholar Meet in 2023. 

1)  Volunteerly worked as the organizing team for QMAT 2022 held at IIT Kanpur.