Quantum Kagome Ice

Understand

Actively shought since the turn of the century, two-dimensional quantum spin liquids (QSLs) are exotic phases of matter where magnetic moments remain disordered even at extremely low temperatures.

• Despite ongoing searches, QSLs remain elusive, due to a lack of concrete knowledge of the microscopic mechanisms that inhibit magnetic order in real materials.
• Here, we study a theoretical model for a broad class of frustrated magnetic rare-earth pyrochlore materials called "quantum spin ices".
• When subject to an external magnetic field along the [111] crystallographic direction, the resulting spin interactions contain a mix of geometric frustration and quantum fluctuations in decoupled two-dimensional kagome planes.