Experimental evidence for field-induced emergent clock anisotropies in the XY pyrochlore Er2Ti2O7

The XY pyrochlore antiferromagnet Er2Ti2O7 exhibits a rare case of Z6 discrete symmetry breaking in its ψ2 magnetic ground state. Despite being well-studied theoretically, systems with high discrete symmetry breakings are uncommon in nature. Thus, Er2Ti2O7 provides an experimental playground for the study of broken Zn symmetry, for n>2. A recent theoretical work examined the effect of a magnetic field on a pyrochlore lattice with broken Z6 …