2010/10/20 by D. Slobinsky, Claudio Castelnovo, C. Castelnovo +7 · 4 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Multiferroics and related materials #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.other
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.105.267205
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. (105) 267205, 2010 · 4 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2010/10/20 · openalex publication_date 2010/12/30 · arxiv updated 2011/01/13 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate the nonequilibrium behavior of the spin-ice Dy2Ti2O7 by studying its magnetization as a function of the field sweep rate. Below the enigmatic ''freezing'' temperature T(equil)≈600 mK, we find that even the slowest sweeps fail to yield the equilibrium magnetization curve and instead give an initially much flatter curve. For higher sweep rates, the magnetization develops sharp steps accompanied by similarly sharp peaks in the temperature of the sample. We ascribe the former behavior to the energy barriers encountered in the magnetization process, which proceeds via flipping of spins on filaments traced out by the field-driven motion of the gapped, long-range interacting magnetic monopole excitations. The peaks in temperature result from the released Zeeman energy not being carried away efficiently; the resulting heating triggers a chain reaction.