Probing Emergent Photon Excitations in a Pyrochlore Quantum Spin Ice Candidate
The rare-earth pyrochlore magnets, R2B2O7, continue to attract great interest as they can combine quantum magnetism with geometrical frustration due to the architecture of the crystal sub-lattice that the magnetic rare-earth ions reside on. The corner-sharing tetrahedral geometry of this sub-lattice allows for the possibility of strong magnetic frustration and the typical effect of this is the promotion of exotic magnetic ground states over conventional ordered ground states. This family of magnetic materials is responsible for many quantum spin liquids. This proposal focuses on the rare type of quantum spin liquid called "quantum spin ice" (QSI) with associated emergent quantum electrodynamics and exotic excitations that behave like photons and monopoles (both electric and magnetic). We've reported measurements on Ce2Zr2O7 that give compelling evidence for a QSI ground state in this material and are proposing to perform the first (to our knowledge) experimental investigation of the photon excitations that are predicted to occur in the QSI phase. An experimental confirmation of these photon excitations would be of extreme impact to the field of quantum materials research.
Please note that you will need to login with your ILL credentials to download the data.
Download DataThe recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is in the following format:
Evan M. Smith; Q. Barthélemy; S.Bhattacharya; Bruce D. Gaulin; E. Kermarrec; OLLIVIER Jacques and SHARMA Ramender Kumar. (2021). Probing Emergent Photon Excitations in a Pyrochlore Quantum Spin Ice Candidate. Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) doi:10.5291/ILL-DATA.4-05-784
ILL has partnered with DataCite as the registration agency
for data persistent identifiers.