Triplon current generation in solids

Chen, Y.*; Sato, Masahiro*; Tang, Y.*; Shiomi, Yuki*; Oyanagi, Koichi*; Masuda, Takatsugu*; Nambu, Yusuke*; Fujita, Masaki*; Saito, Eiji

A triplon refers to a fictitious particle that carries angular momentum corresponding to the elementary excitation in a broad class of quantum dimerized spin systems. Such systems without magnetic order have long been studied as a testing ground for quantum properties of spins. Although triplons have been found to play a central role in thermal and magnetic properties in dimerized magnets with singlet correlation, a spin angular momentum flow carried by triplons, a triplon current, has not been detected yet. Here we report spin Seebeck effects induced by a triplon current: triplon spin Seebeck effect, using a spin-Peierls system CuGeO. The result shows that the heating-driven triplon transport induces spin current whose sign is positive, opposite to the spin-wave cases in magnets. The triplon spin Seebeck effect persists far below the spin-Peierls transition temperature, being consistent with a theoretical calculation for triplon spin Seebeck effects.