Correlated Quantum Tunneling of Monopoles in Spin Ice

Bruno Tomasello, Claudio Castelnovo, Roderich Moessner, and Jorge Quintanilla
Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 067204 – Published 9 August 2019
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Abstract

The spin ice materials Ho2Ti2O7 and Dy2Ti2O7 are by now perhaps the best-studied classical frustrated magnets. A crucial step towards the understanding of their low temperature behavior—both regarding their unusual dynamical properties and the possibility of observing their quantum coherent time evolution—is a quantitative understanding of the spin-flip processes which underpin the hopping of magnetic monopoles. We attack this problem in the framework of a quantum treatment of a single-ion subject to the crystal, exchange, and dipolar fields from neighboring ions. By studying the fundamental quantum mechanical mechanisms, we discover a bimodal distribution of hopping rates that depends on the local spin configuration, in broad agreement with rates extracted from experiment. Applying the same analysis to Pr2Sn2O7 and Pr2Zr2O7, we find an even more pronounced separation of timescales signaling the likelihood of coherent many-body dynamics.

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  • Received 6 November 2018
  • Revised 20 March 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.067204

© 2019 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Atomic, Molecular & OpticalGeneral PhysicsCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsQuantum Information, Science & TechnologyStatistical Physics & Thermodynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Bruno Tomasello1,2,3,*, Claudio Castelnovo4, Roderich Moessner5, and Jorge Quintanilla1,2,†

  • 1SEPnet and Hubbard Theory Consortium, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NH, United Kingdom
  • 2ISIS facility, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Campus, Didcot OX11 0QX, United Kingdom
  • 3Institut Laue-Langevin, CS 20156, 71 avenue des Martyrs, 38042 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
  • 4TCM group, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0HE, United Kingdom
  • 5Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, 01187 Dresden, Germany

  • *brunotomasello83@gmail.com, tomasello@ill.fr
  • j.quintanilla@kent.ac.uk

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Issue

Vol. 123, Iss. 6 — 9 August 2019

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