Competing spin liquids and hidden nematic order in spin ice with frustrated transverse exchange

Understand

Frustration in magnetic interactions can give rise to disordered ground states with subtle and beautiful properties.

• The spin ices Ho2Ti2O7 and Dy2Ti2O7 exemplify this phenomenon, displaying a classical spin liquid state, with fractionalized magnetic--monopole excitations.
• Recently there has been great interest in closely-related "quantum spin ice" materials, following the realization that anisotropic exchange interactions could convert spin ice into a massively-entangled, quantum, spin liquid, where magnetic monopoles become the charges of an emergent quantum electrodynamics.
• Here we show that even the simplest model of a quantum spin ice, the XXZ model on the pyrochlore lattice, can realise a still-richer scenario.