Abstract
Vertex models are an important class of statistical mechanical system that admit exact solutions and exotic physics. Applications include water ice, ferro- and antiferro-electrics, spin ice and artificial spin ice. Here we show that it is possible to engineer spin ice films with atomic-layer precision down to the monolayer limit. Specific heat measurements show that these films, which have a fundamentally different symmetry to bulk spin ice, realise systems close to the two-dimensional F-model, with exotic phase transitions on topologically-constrained configurational manifolds. Our results show how spin ice thin films can release the celebrated Pauling entropy of spin ice without an anomaly in the specific heat. They also significantly expand the class of vertex models available to experiment.
Highlights
Vertex models are an important class of statistical mechanical system that admit exact solutions and exotic physics
Vertex models were first introduced as statistical mechanical models of water ice and hydrogen bonded ferro- and antiferro-electrics[1,2], but they rapidly assumed a much broader importance as model many-body systems that admit exact analysis[3,4,5,6,7]
The defining property of a vertex model is a set of vertex weights, which in experiment is determined by symmetry and tuned by temperature, pressure or applied fields
Summary
Vertex models are an important class of statistical mechanical system that admit exact solutions and exotic physics. Given that we expect the 2D F-model to be the basic model of a spin ice thin film at low temperature, it is worth recalling its properties.
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