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Colloquium Seminar: Spin Ice - A Magnetic Analogue of Common Water Ice with Emergent Electrodynamics and Deconfined Excitations

Speaker: Michel Gingras, U Waterloo

Location: Auditorium

Time: 14:00

Discovered in 1997, spin ices are frustrated magnetic materials that display a low-temperature state characterized by a nonzero residual magnetic entropy that is intimately related to the proton disorder entropy of common water ice, first rationalized by Linus Pauling -- hence the name spin ice. In this talk, I will review the salient aspects of these fascinating systems that have sustained the interests of theorists and experimentalists alike for over fifteen years. In particular, I will emphasize the many layers of "strong emergence" that these systems harbour and comment on their field-theoretic description akin to that of quantum electrodynamics on the lattice with deconfined "matter" excitations and the accompanying gauge boson.