Defect Poisoning of Quantum Spin Ice
Abstract
The hunt for a material realization of quantum spin ice has motivated more than two decades of experimental effort. The candidate materials inevitably contain crystal imperfections, such as magnetic vacancies, whose effects are often disregarded. Here, we show that experimentally relevant levels of dilution can qualitatively reshape the low-energy behavior, as nearby vacancies generate quantum fluctuations that are absent in the clean system. Already at dilution levels as low as two percent, well below those reported in cerium-based pyrochlores, these vacancy-induced processes connect percolating clusters of spins and dominate over the conventional quantum-spin-ice dynamics. We therefore argue that magnetic vacancies in current experiments can strongly contaminate, and potentially completely obscure, the sought-after signatures of quantum spin ice. We support these conclusions using large-scale, unbiased quantum Monte Carlo simulations and exact diagonalization.
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BibTeX
@misc{sanders2026defect,
title = {{Defect Poisoning of Quantum Spin Ice}},
author = {Alaric L. Sanders and Gautam K. Naik and Jonathan N. Hallén and Robin Schäfer},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.28643},
eprint = {2609.28643},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.28643},
note = {CC BY-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Defect Poisoning of Quantum Spin Ice
AU - Alaric L. Sanders
AU - Gautam K. Naik
AU - Jonathan N. Hallén
AU - Robin Schäfer
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/23
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.28643
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.28643
AB - The hunt for a material realization of quantum spin ice has motivated more than two decades of experimental effort. The candidate materials inevitably contain crystal imperfections, such as magnetic vacancies, whose effects are often disregarded. Here, we show that experimentally relevant levels of dilution can qualitatively reshape the low-energy behavior, as nearby vacancies generate quantum fluctuations that are absent in the clean system. Already at dilution levels as low as two percent, well below those reported in cerium-based pyrochlores, these vacancy-induced processes connect percolating clusters of spins and dominate over the conventional quantum-spin-ice dynamics. We therefore argue that magnetic vacancies in current experiments can strongly contaminate, and potentially completely obscure, the sought-after signatures of quantum spin ice. We support these conclusions using large-scale, unbiased quantum Monte Carlo simulations and exact diagonalization.
ER -