We discuss the nearest neighbour spin ice model in the presence of a magnetic field placed along the cubic [100] direction. As recently shown in Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 067207, 2008, the symmetry sustaining ordering transition observed at low temperature is a three dimensional Kasteleyn transition. We confirm this with numerical data using a non-local algorithm that conserves the topological constraints at low temperature and from analytic calculations from a Bethe lattice of corner sharing tetrahedra . We present a thermodynamic description of the Kasteleyn transition and discuss the relevance of our results to recent neutron scattering experiments on spin ice materials.
@article{arxiv.0903.1155,
title = {The Kasteleyn transition in three dimensions: spin ice in a [100] field},
author = {Ludovic D. C. Jaubert and J. T. Chalker and P. C. W. Holdsworth and R. Moessner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0903.1155},
year = {2009}
}