Magnon chiral damping beyond the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction
Abstract
Magnon chiral damping denotes damping that is asymmetric with respect to the magnon wave vector. Such nonreciprocity has been attributed to antisymmetric Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya spin interactions. Here, we provide an alternative theoretical explanation of magnon chiral damping using linear spin-wave theory and antisymmetric Gilbert damping introduced within the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation of motion. First, employing a minimal model of a single sublattice ferromagnet on a rectangular lattice, we show that the effective magnon damping is independent of the system's energy, including contributions from Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. Considering scalar nonlocal Gilbert damping, the effective damping parameter αeff becomes wave-vector dependent. In the long-wavelength limit, αeff acquires a quadratic dependence on bfk. Furthermore, the antisymmetric component of the Gilbert damping tensor gives rise to asymmetric (nonreciprocal) magnon damping. We find the asymmetry to be linear in bfk in the long-wavelength limit, consistent with recent experiments. Extending the analysis to a two-sublattice system, we consider cross-sublattice Gilbert damping. In the presence of only scalar Gilbert damping, broken reciprocity in magnon relaxation arises from Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. In contrast, the cross-sublattice antisymmetric component of the Gilbert damping tensor can generate nonreciprocal magnon damping even if the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction is parametrically set to zero, providing an alternative mechanism for asymmetric spin-wave relaxation. Notably, the nonreciprocity induced by antisymmetric Gilbert damping is roughly an order of magnitude larger than that arising from Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions.
Related
- Chiral Tubular Magnonic Crystals with Periodic Dzyaloshinskii--Moriya Interaction
- Microscopic Understanding of Thermal-magnon Transport in Low-damping Ferrimagnetic Thin Films
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- Disentangling Spin Pumping and Two-Magnon Scattering Contributions to Gilbert Damping in YIG/V Bilayers
- Low magnon damping of a EuSe film down to millikelvin temperatures
BibTeX
@misc{basu2026magnon,
title = {{Magnon chiral damping beyond the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction}},
author = {Darpa Narayan Basu and Subhadip Ghosh and Peter M. Oppeneer and Alexander Mook and Ritwik Mondal},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.03766},
eprint = {2610.03766},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.03766},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Magnon chiral damping beyond the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction
AU - Darpa Narayan Basu
AU - Subhadip Ghosh
AU - Peter M. Oppeneer
AU - Alexander Mook
AU - Ritwik Mondal
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.03766
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.03766
AB - Magnon chiral damping denotes damping that is asymmetric with respect to the magnon wave vector. Such nonreciprocity has been attributed to antisymmetric Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya spin interactions. Here, we provide an alternative theoretical explanation of magnon chiral damping using linear spin-wave theory and antisymmetric Gilbert damping introduced within the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation of motion. First, employing a minimal model of a single sublattice ferromagnet on a rectangular lattice, we show that the effective magnon damping is independent of the system's energy, including contributions from Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. Considering scalar nonlocal Gilbert damping, the effective damping parameter α_eff becomes wave-vector dependent. In the long-wavelength limit, α_eff acquires a quadratic dependence on bfk. Furthermore, the antisymmetric component of the Gilbert damping tensor gives rise to asymmetric (nonreciprocal) magnon damping. We find the asymmetry to be linear in bfk in the long-wavelength limit, consistent with recent experiments. Extending the analysis to a two-sublattice system, we consider cross-sublattice Gilbert damping. In the presence of only scalar Gilbert damping, broken reciprocity in magnon relaxation arises from Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. In contrast, the cross-sublattice antisymmetric component of the Gilbert damping tensor can generate nonreciprocal magnon damping even if the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction is parametrically set to zero, providing an alternative mechanism for asymmetric spin-wave relaxation. Notably, the nonreciprocity induced by antisymmetric Gilbert damping is roughly an order of magnitude larger than that arising from Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions.
ER -