Motivated by the potential chiral spin liquid in the metallic spin ice Pr2Ir2O7, we consider how such a chiral state might be selected from the spin ice manifold. We propose that chiral fluctuations of the conducting Ir moments promote ferro-chiral couplings between the local Pr moments, as a chiral analogue of the magnetic RKKY effect. Pr2Ir2O7 provides an ideal setting to explore such a chiral RKKY effect, given the inherent chirality of the spin-ice manifold. We use a slave-rotor calculation on the pyrochlore lattice to estimate the sign and magnitude of the chiral coupling, and find it can easily explain the 1.5K transition to a ferro-chiral state.
@article{arxiv.1301.0815,
title = {Chiral RKKY interaction in Pr2Ir2O7},
author = {Rebecca Flint and T. Senthil},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1301.0815},
year = {2013}
}