Laboratoire de Physique Théorique
Toulouse - UMR 5152

The Coulomb phase on pyrochlore or checkerboard lattice naturally realizes a fully-packed two-color loop model. In this seminar, we present a detailed analysis of the statistics of these loops, such as their length distribution and fractal dimension, and shall insist on the strongly different features emerging between 2 and 3 dimensions. We connect this body of results to properties of polymers, percolation and insights from Schramm-Loewner evolution (SLE) processes. We also study another extended degree of freedom, called worms, which appear as "Dirac strings" in spin ice. We discuss implications of these results for the efficiency of numerical cluster algorithms, and address implications for the ordering properties of a broader class of magnetic systems, such as Heisenberg magnets and itinerant electron systems.CREATION : 13CREATION : 13