The Lorenz number in CeCoIn$_5$ inferred from the thermal and charge Hall currents

Abstract

The thermal Hall conductivity $\kappa_{xy}$ and Hall conductivity $\sigma_{xy}$ in CeCoIn$_5$ are used to determine the Lorenz number ${\cal L}_H$ at low temperature $T$. This enables the separation of the observed thermal conductivity into its electronic and non-electronic parts. We uncover evidence for a charge-neutral, field-dependent thermal conductivity, which we identify with spin excitations. At low $T$, these excitations dominate the scattering of charge carriers. We show that suppression of the spin excitations in high fields leads to a steep enhancement of the electron mean-free-path, which leads to an interesting scaling relation between the magnetoresistance, thermal conductivity and $\sigma_{xy}$.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures Intro para slightly lengthened. Added 2 new re