Optical quasiparticles called magnetic excitons recently emerged in magnetic van der Waals materials. Akin to the highly effective strategies developed for electrons, the strong interactions of these excitons with the spin degree of freedom may provide innovative solutions for long-standing challenges in optics, such as steering the flow of energy and information. Here we demonstrate the transport of excitons by spin excitations in the van der Waals antiferromagnetic semiconductor CrSBr. Our observations reveal ultrafast, nearly isotropic exciton propagation, substantially enhanced at the Néel temperature, transient contraction and expansion of exciton clouds at low temperatures and superdiffusive behaviour in bilayer samples. These signatures largely defy description by commonly known exciton transport mechanisms. Instead, we attribute them to magnon currents induced by laser excitation. We propose that the drag forces exerted by these currents can effectively imprint characteristic properties of spin excitations onto the motion of excitons. The universal nature of the underlying magnon-exciton scattering promises the driving of excitons by magnons in other magnetic semiconductors and even in non-magnetic materials by proximity in heterostructures, merging the rich physics of magnetotransport with optics and photonics.

Departamento de Física Teórica de la Materia Condensada and Condensed Matter Physics Center Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Madrid Spain

Department of Inorganic Chemistry University of Chemistry and Technology Prague Prague 6 Czech Republic

Department of Physics and Research Center OPTIMAS Rheinland Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern Landau Kaiserslautern Germany

Department of Physics TUM School of Natural Sciences Technical University of Munich Munich Germany

Institute of Applied Physics and Würzburg Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct qmat TUD Dresden University of Technology Dresden Germany

Ioffe Institute St Petersburg Russia

Zentrum für QuantumEngineering Technical University of Munich Garching Germany

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Exciton transport driven by spin excitations in an antiferromagnet