Heat transport of the spin-ice materials Ho$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$ and Dy$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$

Abstract

The elementary excitations of the spin-ice materials Ho$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$ and Dy$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$ in zero field can be described as independent magnetic monopoles. We investigate the influence of these exotic excitations on the heat transport by measuring the magnetic-field dependent thermal conductivity $\kappa $. Additional measurements on the highly dilute reference compounds HoYTi$_2$O$_7$ and DyYTi$_2$O$_7$ enable us to separate $\kappa $ into a sum of phononic ($\kappa_{ph}$) and magnetic ($\kappa_{mag}$) contributions. For both spin-ice materials, we derive significant zero-field contributions $\kappa_{mag}$, which are rapidly suppressed in finite magnetic fields. Moreover, $\kappa_{mag}$ sensitively depends on the scattering of phonons by magnetic excitations, which is rather different for the Ho- and the Dy-based materials and, as a further consequence, the respective magnetic-field dependent changes $\kappa_{ph}(B)$ are even of opposite signs.