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Emergent Coulombic criticality and Kibble-Zurek scaling in a topological magnet


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Authors

Hamp, J 
Chandran, A 
Moessner, R 
Castelnovo, Claudio  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1752-6343

Abstract

When a classical system is driven through a continuous phase transition, its nonequilibrium response is universal and exhibits Kibble-Zurek scaling. We explore this dynamical scaling in the novel context of a three-dimensional topological magnet with fractionalized excitations, namely the liquid-gas transition of the emergent mobile magnetic monopoles in dipolar spin ice. Using field-mixing and finite-size scaling techniques, we place the critical point of the liquid-gas line in the three-dimensional Ising universality class. We then demonstrate Kibble-Zurek scaling for sweeps of the magnetic field through the critical point. Unusually slow microscopic time scales in spin ice offer a unique opportunity to detect this universal nonequilibrium physics in current experimental setups.

Description

Keywords

cond-mat.str-el, cond-mat.str-el, cond-mat.stat-mech

Journal Title

Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1098-0121
1550-235X

Volume Title

92

Publisher

American Physical Society (APS)
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/K028960/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/M007065/1)
This work was supported in part by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Grant No. EP/G049394/1 (C.C.), the Helmholtz Virtual Institute “New States of Matter and Their Excitations,” and the EPSRC NetworkPlus on “Emergence and Physics far from Equilibrium.” Research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through Industry Canada and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation. The calculations were performed using the Darwin Supercomputer of the University of Cambridge High Performance Computing Service (http://www.hpc.cam.ac.uk/) and the ARCHER UK National Supercomputing Service (http://www.archer.ac.uk/, for which access was provided by the ARCHER Driving Test scheme). The authors are grateful to A. Sandvik for useful discussions and to S. L. Sondhi for advice and collaboration on several pieces of related work. J.O.H. is grateful to the EPSRC for funding, and to Michael Rutter for computing support.