Spin liquid and quantum phase transition without symmetry breaking in a frustrated three-dimensional Ising model

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a first-order quantum phase transition without symmetry breaking in a 3D frustrated Ising model, revealing new insights into quantum spin liquids and proposing experimental realization methods.

Contribution

It identifies a novel quantum phase transition in a 3D frustrated Ising model and suggests experimental setups using strained spin ice materials.

Findings

First-order phase transition without symmetry breaking.

Quantitative analysis via series expansions.

Potential experimental realization with non-Kramers spin ice.

Abstract

We show that the highly frustrated transverse-field Ising model on the three-dimensional pyrochlore lattice realizes a first-order phase transition without symmetry breaking between the low-field Coulomb quantum spin liquid and the high-field polarized phase. The quantum phase transition is located quantitively by comparing low- and high-field series expansions. Furthermore, the intriguing properties of the elementary excitations in the polarized phase are investigated. We argue that this model can be achieved experimentally by applying mechanical strain to a classical spin ice material comprised of non-Kramers spins such as Ho_2Ti_2O_7. Taken together with our results, this provides a new experimental platform to study quantum spin liquid physics.