We study the low-temperature behaviour of spin ice when uniaxial pressure induces a tetragonal distortion. There is a phase transition between a Coulomb liquid and a fully magnetised phase. Unusually, it combines features of discontinuous and continuous transitions: the order parameter exhibits a jump, but this is accompanied by a divergent susceptibility and vanishing domain wall tension. All these aspects can be understood as a consequence of an emergent SU(2) symmetry at the critical point. We map out a possible experimental realisation.
@article{arxiv.1003.4896,
title = {Spin ice under pressure: symmetry enhancement and infinite order multicriticality},
author = {Ludovic D. C. Jaubert and J. T. Chalker and Peter C. W. Holdsworth and R. Moessner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.4896},
year = {2010}
}