Spin slush in an extended spin ice model.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27470199.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms12234 and PMC identifier 4974571.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
We present a new classical spin liquid on the pyrochlore lattice by extending spin ice with further neighbour interactions. We find that this disorder-free spin model exhibits a form of dynamical heterogeneity with extremely slow relaxation for some spins, while others fluctuate quickly down to zero temperature. We thus call this state spin slush, in analogy to the heterogeneous mixture of solid and liquid water. This behaviour is driven by the structure of the ground-state manifold which extends the celebrated two-in/two-out ice states to include branching structures built from three-in/one-out, three-out/one-in and all-in/all-out tetrahedra defects. Distinctive liquid-like patterns in the magnetic correlations serve as a signature of this intermediate range order. Possible applications to materials as well the effects of quantum tunnelling are discussed.