Spin liquid and quantum phase transition without symmetry breaking in a frustrated three-dimensional Ising model

Understand

We show that the highly frustrated transverse-field Ising model on the three-dimensional pyrochlore lattice realizes a first-order phase transition without symmetry breaking between the low-field Coulomb quantum spin liquid and the high-field polarized phase.

• The quantum phase transition is located quantitively by comparing low- and high-field series expansions.
• Furthermore, the intriguing properties of the elementary excitations in the polarized phase are investigated.
• We argue that this model can be achieved experimentally by applying mechanical strain to a classical spin ice material comprised of non-Kramers spins such as Ho_2Ti_2O_7.