Chiral Splitting of Magnons and Paramagnon Coupling in MnTe

We investigate the intertwined dynamics of spin and lattice degrees of freedom in α-MnTe, focusing on the possible chiral splitting of magnon modes and their coupling to paramagnons, phonons, and polaronic excitations. The combination of strong spin-orbit interaction, noncentrosymmetric crystal symmetry, and magnetoelastic correlations in MnTe provides a fertile ground to explore such multichannel interactions. Through inelastic neutron scattering and complementary spinwave modeling, we examine how magnon–phonon hybridization evolves with temperature and how short-range spin correlations give rise to dispersive paramagnon modes that may couple to lattice fluctuations. We aim to establish a microscopic framework that captures the cooperative behavior of spin and lattice degrees of freedom underlying the complex excitation landscape of MnTe.