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Register a new userTopological Sector Fluctuations and Curie Law Crossover in Spin Ice
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Ludovic D.C. Jaubert
Publication date
2012
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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At low temperatures, a spin ice enters a Coulomb phase - a state with algebraic correlations and topologically constrained spin configurations. In Ho2Ti2O7, we have observed experimentally that this process is accompanied by a non-standard temperature evolution of the wave vector dependent magnetic susceptibility, as measured by neutron scattering. Analytical and numerical approaches reveal signatures of a crossover between two Curie laws, one characterizing the high temperature paramagnetic regime, and the other the low temperature topologically constrained regime, which we call the spin liquid Curie law. The theory is shown to be in excellent agreement with neutron scattering experiments. On a more general footing, i) the existence of two Curie laws appears to be a general property of the emergent gauge field for a classical spin liquid, and ii) sheds light on the experimental difficulty of measuring a precise Curie-Weiss temperature in frustrated materials; iii) the mapping between gauge and spin degrees of freedom means that the susceptibility at finite wave vector can be used as a local probe of fluctuations among topological sectors.
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Spin ices, frustrated magnetic materials analogous to common water ice, are exemplars of high frustration in three dimensions. Recent experimental studies of the low-temperature properties of the paradigmatic Dy$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$ spin ice material, in particular whether the predicted transition to long-range order occurs, raise questions as per the currently accepted microscopic model of this system. In this work, we combine Monte Carlo simulations and mean-field theory calculations to analyze data from magnetization, elastic neutron scattering and specific heat measurements on Dy$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$. We also reconsider the possible importance of the nuclear specific heat, $C_{rm nuc}$, in Dy$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$. We find that $C_{rm nuc}$ is not entirely negligible below a temperature $sim 0.5$ K and must be taken into account in a quantitative analysis of the calorimetric data of this compound below that temperature. We find that small effective exchange interactions compete with the magnetostatic dipolar interaction responsible for the main spin ice phenomenology. This causes an unexpected refrustration of the long-range order that would be expected from the incompletely self-screened dipolar interaction and which positions the material at the boundary between two competing classical long-range ordered ground states. This allows for the manifestation of new physical low-temperature phenomena in Dy$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$, as exposed by recent specific heat measurements. We show that among the four most likely causes for the observed upturn of the specific heat at low temperature -- an exchange-induced transition to long-range order, quantum non-Ising (transverse) terms in the effective spin Hamiltonian, the nuclear hyperfine contribution and random disorder -- only the last appears to be reasonably able to explain the calorimetric data.
We predict the non-linear non-equilibrium response of a magnetolyte, the Coulomb fluid of magnetic monopoles in spin ice. This involves an increase of the monopole density due to the second Wien effect---a universal and robust enhancement for Coulomb systems in an external field---which in turn speeds up the magnetization dynamics, manifest in a non-linear susceptibility. Along the way, we gain new insights into the AC version of the classic Wien effect. One striking discovery is that of a frequency window where the Wien effect for magnetolyte and electrolyte are indistinguishable, with the former exhibiting perfect symmetry between the charges. In addition, we find a new low-frequency regime where the growing magnetization counteracts the Wien effect. We discuss for what parameters best to observe the AC Wien effect in Dy$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$.
We study single crystals of Dy$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$ and Ho$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$ under magnetic field and stress applied along their [001] direction. We find that many of the features that the emergent gauge field of spin ice confers to the macroscopic magnetic properties are preserved in spite of the finite temperature. The magnetisation vs. field shows an upward convexity within a broad range of fields, while the static and dynamic susceptibilities present a peculiar peak. Following this feature for both compounds, we determine a single experimental transition curve: that for the Kasteleyn transition in three dimensions, proposed more than a decade ago. Additionally, we observe that compression up to $-0.8%$ along [001] does not significantly change the thermodynamics. However, the dynamical response of Ho$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$ is quite sensitive to changes introduced in the ${rm Ho}^{3+}$ environment. Uniaxial compression can thus open up experimental access to equilibrium properties of spin ice at low temperatures.
We study magnetic fluctuations in a system of interacting spins on a lattice at high temperatures and in the presence of a spatially varying magnetic field. Starting from a microscopic Hamiltonian we derive effective equations of motion for the spins and solve these equations self-consistently. We find that the spin fluctuations can be described by an effective diffusion equation with a diffusion coefficient which strongly depends on the ratio of the magnetic field gradient to the strength of spin-spin interactions. We also extend our studies to account for external noise and find that the relaxation times and the diffusion coefficient are mutually dependent.
We study the mechanism of decay of a topological (winding-number) excitation due to finite-size effects in a two-dimensional valence-bond solid state, realized in an $S=1/2$ spin model ($J$-$Q$ model) and studied using projector Monte Carlo simulations in the valence bond basis. A topological excitation with winding number $|W|>0$ contains domain walls, which are unstable due to the emergence of long valence bonds in the wave function, unlike in effective descriptions with the quantum dimer model. We find that the life time of the winding number in imaginary time diverges as a power of the system length $L$. The energy can be computed within this time (i.e., it converges toward a quasi-eigenvalue before the winding number decays) and agrees for large $L$ with the domain-wall energy computed in an open lattice with boundary modifications enforcing a domain wall. Constructing a simplified two-state model and using the imaginary-time behavior from the simulations as input, we find that the real-time decay rate out of the initial winding sector is exponentially small in $L$. Thus, the winding number rapidly becomes a well-defined conserved quantum number for large systems, supporting the conclusions reached by computing the energy quasi-eigenvalues. Including Heisenberg exchange interactions which brings the system to a quantum-critical point separating the valence-bond solid from an antiferromagnetic ground state (the putative deconfined quantum-critical point), we can also converge the domain wall energy here and find that it decays as a power-law of the system size. Thus, the winding number is an emergent quantum number also at the critical point, with all winding number sectors becoming degenerate in the thermodynamic limit. This supports the description of the critical point in terms of a U(1) gauge-field theory.
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