Large anomalous Nernst and spin Nernst effects in the noncollinear antiferromagnets Mn3X (X = Sn, Ge, Ga)

Noncollinear antiferromagnets have recently been attracting considerable interest partly due to recent surprising discoveries of the anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in them and partly because they have promising applications in antiferromagnetic spintronics. Here we study the anomalous Nernst effect (ANE), a phenomenon having the same origin as the AHE, and also the spin Nernst effect (SNE) as well as AHE and the spin Hall effect (SHE) in noncollinear antiferromagnetic Mn3X (X = Sn, Ge, Ga) within the Berry phase formalism based on ab initio relativistic band structure calculations. For comparison, we also calculate the anomalous Nernst conductivity (ANC) and anomalous Hall conductivity (AHC) of ferromagnetic iron as well as the spin Nernst conductivity (SNC) of platinum metal. Remarkably, the calculated ANC at room temperature (300 K) for all three alloys is huge, being 10-40 times larger than that of iron. Moreover, the calculated SNC for Mn3Sn and Mn3Ga is also larger, being about five times larger than that of platinum. This suggests that these antiferromagnets would be useful materials for thermoelectronic devices and spin caloritronic devices. The calculated ANC of Mn3Sn and iron are in reasonably good agreement with the very recent experiments. The calculated SNC of platinum also agrees with the very recent experiments in both sign and magnitude. The calculated thermoelectric and thermomagnetic properties are analyzed in terms of the band structures as well as the energy-dependent AHC, ANC, SNC, and spin Hall conductivity via the Mott relations.