Abstract

We study classical spin ice under uniaxial strain along the [111] crystallographic axis. Remarkably, such strain preserves the extensive ice degeneracy and the corresponding classical Coulomb phase. The emergent monopole excitations remain thermodynamically deconfined exactly as in the isotropic case. However, their motion under local heat bath dynamics depends qualitatively on the sign of the strain. In the low-temperature limit for negative strain, the monopoles diffuse, while for positive strain, they localize. Introducing additional ring exchange dynamics into the ice background transforms the localized monopoles into sub-dimensional excitations whose motion is restricted to diffusion in the (111)-plane. The phenomena we identify are experimentally accessible in rare-earth pyrochlores under uniaxial stress as well as in tripod kagome materials. The diffusive versus localized nature of the monopoles manifests in characteristic magnetic noise spectra, which we compute.