Dumping topological charges on neighbors: ice manifolds for colloids and vortices

We investigate the recently reported analogies between pinned vortices in nano-structured superconductors or colloids in optical traps, and spin ice materials. It has been found experimentally and numerically that both colloids and vortices exhibit ice or quasi-ice manifolds. However, the frustration of colloids and vortices differs essentially from spin ice at the vertex level. We show that the effective vertex energetics of the colloidal/vortex systems is made identical to that of spin ice materials by the contribution of an emergent field associated to the topological charge of the vertex. The similarity extends to the local low-energy dynamics of the ice manifold, where the effect of geometric hard constraints can be subsumed into the spatial modulation of the emergent field, which mediates an entropic interaction between topological charges. There, as in spin ice materials, genuine ice manifolds enter a Coulomb phase, whereas quasi-ice manifolds posses a well defined screening length, provided by a plasma of embedded topological charges. We also show that such similarities break down in lattices of mixed coordination because of topological charge transfer between sub-latices. This opens interesting perspective for extensions beyond physics, to social and economical networks.