Higgs transitions of spin ice

Abstract

Frustrated magnets such as spin ice exhibit Coulomb phases, where correlations have power-law forms at long distances. Applied perturbations can cause ordering transitions which cannot be described by the usual Landau paradigm, and are instead naturally viewed as Higgs transitions of an emergent gauge theory. Starting from a classical statistical model of spin ice, it is shown that a variety of possible phases and transitions can be described by this approach. Certain cases are identified where continuous transitions are argued to be likely; the predicted critical behavior may be tested in experiments or numerical simulations.

23 pages, 10 figures; v2: published version with minor changes; ancillary file "Figures3D.nb" is a Mathematica (v7) notebook containing figures as rotatable 3D graphics (see http://www.wolfram.com/cdf-player/ for a free viewer)

References in corpus (15)

• "Deconfined" quantum critical points
• Quantum criticality beyond the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm
• Why spin ice obeys the ice rules
• Putting competing orders in their place near the Mott transition
• Theory of the [111] magnetization plateau in spin ice
• A Three Dimensional Kasteleyn Transition: Spin Ice in a [100] Field
• Coulomb gas transitions in three-dimensional classical dimer models
• Gauge theory picture of an ordering transition in a dimer model
• Unconventional continuous phase transition in a three dimensional dimer model
• Phase diagram of an extended classical dimer model
• Spin ice under pressure: symmetry enhancement and infinite order multicriticality
• SU(2)-invariant continuum theory for an unconventional phase transition in a three-dimensional classical dimer model
• Classical-Quantum Mappings for Geometrically Frustrated Systems: Spin Ice in a [100] Field
• Classical to quantum mapping for an unconventional phase transition in a three-dimensional classical dimer model
• Critical phenomena in a highly constrained classical spin system: Neel ordering from the Coulomb phase

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Quantum Spin Ice: A Search for Gapless Quantum Spin Liquids in Pyrochlore Magnets
• Higgs transition from a magnetic Coulomb liquid to a ferromagnet in Yb_2Ti_2O_7
• The quantum origins of moment fragmentation in Nd2Zr2O7
• Macroscopic magnetic frustration
• Topological Sector Fluctuations and Curie Law Crossover in Spin Ice
• New physics in frustrated magnets: Spin ices, monopoles, etc
• Of chain-based order and quantum spin liquids in dipolar spin ice
• Order out of a Coulomb phase and Higgs transtion: frustrated transverse interactions of Nd2Zr2O7
• Spin Ice Thin Film: Surface Ordering, Partial Magnetic Wetting and Emergent Square Ice
• Confinement of monopoles and scaling theory near unconventional critical points
• Itinerant electrons in the Coulomb phase
• Compass and Kitaev models -- Theory and Physical Motivations
• Universal monopole scaling near transitions from the Coulomb phase
• Half-Magnetization Plateau of a Dipolar Spin Ice in a [100] Field
• Hidden phases born of a quantum spin liquid: Application to pyrochlore spin ice
• Synchronization transition in the double dimer model on the cubic lattice
• Tunable critical correlations in kagome ice
• Experimental Measures of Topological Sector Fluctuations in the F-Model
• Hybrid Local-Order Mechanism for Inversion Symmetry Breaking
• Room temperature spin-ice physics in cadmium cyanide
• Mean-field theory for confinement transitions and magnetization plateaux in spin ice