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Melting of a "spin ice"

Melting of a "spin ice"

The "spin ice" compound Ho2Ti2O7 is a rare example of a geometrically frustrated ferromagnet. Using option IN11C, it was found that at higher temperature, the dynamics consists of thermally activated single spin flips between the two states of the ground state doublet, while below T=16K, where this process is frozen, quantum transitions between the states are involved.

S(Q,t) measured for a polycrystalline sample of Ho2Ti2O7 (G. Ehlers et al., J. Phys. Cond. Matter 16, (2004) S635)