Electric activity at magnetic moment fragmentation in spin ice.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34031404.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-23380-w and PMC identifier 8144587.
- 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
Spin ice systems display a variety of very nontrivial properties, the most striking being the existence in them of magnetic monopoles. Such monopole states can also have nontrivial electric properties: there exist electric dipoles attached to each monopole. A novel situation is encountered in the moment fragmentation (MF) state, in which monopoles and antimonopoles are perfectly ordered, whereas spins themselves remain disordered. We show that such partial ordering strongly modifies the electric activity of such systems: the electric dipoles, which are usually random and dynamic, become paired in the MF state in (d, -d) pairs, thus strongly reducing their electric activity. The electric currents existing in systems with noncoplanar spins are also strongly influenced by MF. We also consider modifications in dipole and current patterns in magnetic textures (domain walls, local defects) and at excitations with nontrivial dynamics in a MF state, which show very rich behaviour and which could in principle allow to control them by electric field.