Magnon-polaron anomaly in nonlocal spin transport through antiferromagnetic insulators

Abstract

We present a nonlocal spin transport theory for the coupled dynamics of magnetization and lattice vibrations in antiferromagnetic insulators. We find that magnon-polaron formation, i.e., coherently hybridized magnon and acoustic phonon modes, not only leads to anomalous features in the nonlocal spin current but also renormalizes the spin-flop transition field of the antiferromagnets. A length scale for the magnon-polaron formation below which the spin current is not affected by the lattice is also extracted from this nonlocal setup.