Formulation of intrinsic nonlinear thermal conductivity for bosonic systems using quantum kinetic equation

Abstract

Nonlinear responses in transport phenomena have attracted significant attention because they can arise even when linear responses are forbidden by symmetry, with the quantum geometry of Bloch wave functions playing an essential role. While such effects have been extensively studied in electric transport, similar quantum-geometric mechanisms are also expected to govern nonlinear thermal transport. In particular, thermal responses are crucial in bosonic systems such as magnons and phonons, which are charge-neutral quasiparticles. However, a consistent theoretical description of nonlinear thermal transport remains challenging because of the difficulty in the treatment of energy magnetization in higher-order responses with Luttinger's gravitational potential method. Here, we formulate the intrinsic nonlinear thermal conductivity of bosonic systems using a quantum kinetic equation approach that avoids Luttinger's method and naturally incorporates contributions from energy magnetization. We identify three distinct contributions to the nonlinear thermal conductivity: two expressed in terms of quantum-geometric quantities, namely the quantum metric and the thermal Berry-connection polarizability (TBCP), and a third determined solely by the band dispersions. Applying our formalism to a specific quantum spin model within linear spin-wave theory, we show that the TBCP term dominates the nonlinear thermal Hall effect in the absence of threefold symmetry. Our results differ quantitatively from those obtained using semiclassical theory, thereby highlighting the importance of quantum corrections beyond the semiclassical picture. These findings establish a general framework for intrinsic nonlinear thermal responses in bosonic systems and reveal quantum-geometric mechanisms underlying thermal transport beyond linear response theory.