Room temperature spin-ice physics in cadmium cyanide

Understand

Spin-ices are frustrated magnets that support a particularly rich variety of emergent physics.

• Typically, it is the interplay of magnetic dipole interactions, spin anisotropy, and geometric frustration on the pyrochlore lattice that drives spin-ice formation.
• The relevant physics occurs at temperatures commensurate with the magnetic interaction strength, which for most systems is 1--5\,K.
• This low energy scale poses severe challenges for experimental studies of spin-ices and the practical exploitation of their unusual properties.