Oxygen-deficient quantum spin ice

In quantum analogues of the spin ice materials quantum mechanical tunneling between ground states is expected, and exotic emergent behaviour has been predicted including a Higgs transition to a ferromagnetic phase, and an emergent electrodynamics that, in addition to gapped electric and magnetic charges, hosts gapless photon excitations. However, the ground states of the potential experimental realizations of these systems are strongly sample dependent, suggesting a key role for defects. In our previous work we showed that oxygen deficiency is the dominant contribution to defects in classical spin ice materials, and that this leads to magnetic distortions that slow down the long-time monopole dynamics at sub-Kelvin temperatures. We now propose to employ the techniques successfully used to study defects in classical spin ices to the quantum spin ices.