https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2018-90390-3
Regular Article
Breakdown of a topological transition in two-dimensional spin-ice due to geometry effects
1
Instituto de Física de Líquidos y Sistemas Biológicos, UNLP-CONICET,
La Plata 1900, Argentina
2
SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, North Haugh,
St Andrews KY16 9SS, UK
a e-mail: sag2@st-and.ac.uk
Received:
14
June
2018
Received in final form:
25
August
2018
Published online: 5 December 2018
We investigate the topological transition that takes place in spin-ice systems when a polarising field is applied along a principal axis. In particular, we analyse a two dimensional spin-ice model; we find that the topological transition is strongly affected by geometrical constraints in the shape of the sample, and that in the case where the dimension perpendicular to the field is much smaller than the longitudinal one, i.e. in the quasi-1D spin-ice-ladder limit, it splits into a series of first-order phase transitions characterised by sharp spikes in the specific heat and susceptibility.
Key words: Solid State and Materials
© The Author(s) 2018. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
