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arXiv · 2608.03850

Local magnetic order in vacancy-disrupted spin ice Ho2TiO5

Raju Baral·Haidong Zhou·Qiang Zhang·Benjamin A. Frandsen·Stuart Calder
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Abstract

We investigate how local magnetic correlations evolve when the classical pyrochlore spin-ice Ho2Ti2O7 is transformed into the partially disordered stuffed compound Ho2TiO5. Neutron scattering measurements were analyzed using real-space magnetic pair distribution function, reciprocal-space reverse Monte Carlo, and half-polarized neutron powder diffraction methods to connect the average crystal structure with local magnetic correlations. Both compounds retain long-range $Fd-3m symmetry, but in Ho2TiO5 this average structure distorts locally through Ho-O, Ti-O and O-O bond-length disorder associated with partial Ho/Ti occupancy. Despite this disorder, half-polarized neutron powder diffraction shows that the Ho moments retain local <111> rangle Ising anisotropy and form spin-in/spin-out configurations on the tetrahedral network. In Ho2Ti2O7, real- and reciprocal-space analyses reveal a nearly ideal two-in/two-out spin-ice state at 0.3K, with 95% of tetrahedra satisfying the ice rule, followed by progressive thermal disordering on warming. In Ho2TiO5, most tetrahedra are magnetically incomplete because some tetrahedral vertices are occupied by nonmagnetic Ti rather than Ho; nevertheless, the dominant incomplete configurations are 2-in/1-out and 1-in/2-out, which are locally compatible with the ice rule if the missing Ho spin is restored. The single-ion <111> Ising anisotropy is therefore retained throughout, while the collective ice ordering is strongly disrupted: Ho2TiO5 is a vacancy-disrupted spin ice in which a local ice-rule tendency persists on a topologically incomplete magnetic network.

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Raju Baral, Haidong Zhou, Qiang Zhang, Benjamin A. Frandsen, Stuart Calder. 2026-08-04. Local magnetic order in vacancy-disrupted spin ice Ho2TiO5. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.03850

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