Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
Volume 108, Issue 6, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.067204
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Funding
- EPSRC [EP/C539974/1, EP/G031460/1]
- Hungarian OTKA [K73455]
- National Research Foundation of Korea [APCTP] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/G031460/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- EPSRC [EP/G031460/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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Ice states, in which frustrated interactions lead to a macroscopic ground-state degeneracy, occur in water ice, in problems of frustrated charge order on the pyrochlore lattice, and in the family of rare-earth magnets collectively known as spin ice. Of particular interest at the moment are quantum spin-ice materials, where large quantum fluctuations may permit tunnelling between a macroscopic number of different classical ground states. Here we use zero-temperature quantum Monte Carlo simulations to show how such tunnelling can lift the degeneracy of a spin or charge ice, stabilizing a unique quantum-ice ground state-a quantum liquid with excitations described by the Maxwell action of (3 + 1)-dimensional quantum electrodynamics. We further identify a competing ordered squiggle state, and show how both squiggle and quantum-ice states might be distinguished in neutron scattering experiments on a spin-ice material.
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