Phonon thermal Hall effect: the roles of disorder, annealing, and metallic contacts

The phonon thermal Hall effect (THE) is a ubiquitous yet poorly understood phenomenon in insulators. Its microscopic origin remains debated, partly due to significant sample-dependent variations that hint at uncontrolled experimental parameters. Using SrTiO3 as a model system, we identify disorder and uncontrolled strain as suppressors of a thermal Hall signal. Crystals with high thermal conductivity exhibit a substantial thermal Hall angle ∇Ty/∇Tx (up to 0.3% at 9 T), whereas the effect is virtually absent in disordered samples. Crucially, annealing (in air atmosphere) these disordered samples partially restores the THE (~0.1% at 9 T) with little effect on the longitudinal thermal conductivity. This decoupling reveals that the amplitude of THE is not simply set by the phonon mean free path. Furthermore, measurements performed with metallic and insulating contacts yield identical results on the same sample. This definitely rules out parasitic signals as the effect’s origin. Our work, by establishing the phonon THE as an intrinsic property of the crystal lattice and extremely sensitive to disorder, sharply constrains theoretical scenarios.