Phonon-Magnon Interaction in Low Dimensional Quantum Magnets Observed by Dynamic Heat Transport Measurements

Thirty-five years ago, Sanders and Walton [Phys. Rev. B 15, 1489 (1977)] proposed a method to measure the phonon-magnon interaction in antiferromagnets through thermal transport which so far has not been verified experimentally. We show that a dynamical variant of this approach allows direct extraction of the phonon-magnon equilibration time, yielding 400 mu s for the cuprate spin-ladder system Ca9La5Cu24O41. The present work provides a general method to directly address the spin-phonon interaction by means of dynamical transport experiments. DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.147206