This thesis is devoted to ultrasound investigations of a family of rare-earth compounds known as spin ice. The crystal structure of these compounds is composed of tetrahedral units with magnetic ions in each corners. In the ground state of these materials, two spins are directed inward on each tetrahedron and two spins outward. There are a number of features that are common to the spin-ice materials Ho2Ti2O7 (HTO), Yb2Ti2O7 (YbTO), and Dy2Ti2O7 (DTO). In DTO, nonequilibrium processes have been probed by ultrasound waves at low temperatures. The sound velocity and sound attenuation exhibit a number of unusual anomalies as a function of applied magnetic field for temperatures below the freezing temperature of 500 mK. These robust anomalies can be seen for longitudinal and transverse acoustic modes for different field directions. The anomalies show broad hystereses. Most notable are peaks in the sound velocity, which exhibit two distinct regimes: an intrinsic (extrinsic) regime in which the data collapse for different sweep rates when plotted as function of field strength (time). Moreover, these quasi-periodic peaks are strongly affected by thermalcoupling conditions. We discuss our observations in context of emergent quasiparticles (magnetic monopoles) which govern the low-temperature dynamics of spin ice. I have studied spin-lattice and single-ion effects in the spin-ice materials (DTO) and (HTO) in a wide range of temperatures and magnetic fields. The sound velocity and sound attenuation of various acoustic modes experience a renormalization due to phase transformations as well as interactions with lowenergy magnetic excitations (topological defects). In particular, a sharp dip observed in the sound attenuation has been explained within the framework of the spin-ice model. In addition, crystal-electric-field effects lead to a renormalization of the sound velocity and sound attenuation at very high magnetic fields. We analyze our observations using an approach based on exchange-striction couplings and single-ion-type interactions. Experiments on YbTO revealed evidence of a first-order transition known as a transition from a magnetic Coulomb liquid (MCL) to Coulomb ferromagnet state at T = 0.15 K. Coupling of the sound waves to quantum fluctuations cause a sharp anomaly in the sound velocity and sound attenuation. An increase of the quantum-fluctuation frequency when lowering the temperature down to the phase transition, leads to a minimum in the sound velocity and a maximum in the sound attenuation. This behavior can be explained in frame of resonating sound waves in presence of quantum fluctuations. Below the transition temperature, the quantum fluctuation effects are less pronounced. Measurements in applied magnetic fields, revealed a transition from a fluctuating Coulomb-ferromagnet state to a state with suppressed fluctuations. The experimental data presented in this thesis, show the important role of spin-strain interactions in spin-ice materials. In addition, theoretical considerations based on exchange-striction couplings and single-ion strain interaction, strongly support most of the experimental results.

Neben ihrer Bedeutung in industriellen Anwendungen dienen Kolloide als Modellsysteme in Experimenten und in der Theorie, um die Struktur und Dynamik von kondensierter Materie zu untersuchen. Kürzlich wurde experimentell gezeigt, dass eine kleine Anisotropie ausreicht, um die viskoelastische Antwort im Vergleich zu harten Kugeln drastisch zu ändern. Die mikroskopischen Ursachen hierfür sind bisher nicht verstanden. In dieser Arbeit werden daher Nichtgleichgewichts-Brownsche-Dynamik-Simulationen (NEBD) von harten kolloidalen Dumbbells in oszillatorischen Scherfeldern entwickelt und eingesetzt, um diese Resultate mit Verbindung zu Rheologie- und Neutronenstreuexperimenten zu erklären. Weiterhin wird die Bedeutung der Anisotropie für Struktur und Dynamik von solchen Suspensionen im Gleichgewicht mit Hilfe von "Linear-Response"-Theorie und Brownsche-Dynamik-Simulationen analysiert. Im linearen Limit zeigt die Scherviskosität bei hohen Packungsdichten einen dramatischen Anstieg jenseits eines kritischen Anisotropieparameters. Dies weist darauf hin, dass schon bei den kleinen Anisotropien kollektive Rotations-Translations-Kopplungen für langsame Zeitskalen verantwortlich sind. Weiterhin wird ein Nichtgleichgewichtsübergang mittels NEBD-Simulationen von Suspensionen harter Dumbbells im PC unter oszillatorischer Scherung ersichtlich. Es wird gezeigt, dass der kontinuierliche Übergang nur für sehr kleine Aspektverhältnisse erhalten bleibt. Oberhalb eines bestimmten Aspektverhältnisses wird der Übergang durch einen ungeordneten Zustand vermittelt. Außerdem wird ein Sliding-Layer Zustand mit kollektiver Ordnung der Teilchenausrichtung bei hohen Scheramplituden beobachtet. Somit zeigt diese Arbeit, dass die NEBD-Simulationen Phänomene in Rheologie- und Streuexperimenten erklären. Angesichts dieser Experimente wird gezeigt, dass der Orientierungsfreiheitsgrad einen starken Einfluss auf den strukturellen Übergang bei steigenden Amplituden hat. / Besides being important for industrial applications, colloidal suspensions have long served as model systems for investigating the structure and dynamics of condensed matter. Recently, it has been demonstrated experimentally that apparently a small particle anisotropy is sufficient to dramatically change the viscoelastic response under external shearing fields, of which the microscopic mechanisms are not yet sufficiently understood. In the present work, NEBD simulations of colloidal hard dumbbells in oscillatory shear fields are developed and employed to elucidate the novel findings in close connection with comprehensive rheology and SANS experiments. Furthermore, by utilising BD simulations and linear response theory, the impact of anisotropy on structure and dynamics of such suspensions in equilibrium is analysed. In the linear response limit, the shear viscosity exhibits a dramatic increase at high packing fractions beyond a critical anisotropy of the particles. This indicates that newly occurring, collective rotational-translational couplings must be made responsible for slow time scales appearing in the PC. Moreover, a non-equilibrium transition emerging at moderate aspect ratios is revealed by NEBD of plastic crystalline suspensions under oscillatory shear. This transition behaviour is systematically studied. It is demonstrated that the continuous nature of the transition is retained for very low aspect ratios only. Above a certain aspect ratio, the transition is mediated by an intermediate disordered state. Furthermore, a partially oriented sliding layer state featuring a finite collective order in the particles'' orientations is observed at high strains. Hence, this thesis demonstrates that the NEBD simulations explain novel phenomena in rheology and scattering experiments. In the light of these experiments, it is shown that the orientational degree of freedom has a vigorous impact on the structural transition under increasing oscillatory shear.

Informationsthermodynamik ist der aktuelle Trend in der statistischen Physik. Es ist die theoretische Konstruktion eines einheitlichen Rahmens für die Beschreibung der Nichtgleichgewichtsmerkmale stochastischer dynamischer Systeme, wie die Dissipation der Arbeit und die Irreversibilität von Trajektorien, unter Verwendung der Sprache der Fluktuationstheoreme und der Informationstheorie. Die modellunabhängige Natur von Information und Irreversibilität ermöglicht eine breite Anwendbarkeit der Theorie auf allgemeinere (nichtphysikalische) Modelle aus der Systembiologie und der quantitativen Finanzmathematik, in denen asymmetrische Wechselwirkungen und Nichtlinearitäten allgegenwärtig sind. Insbesondere interessieren wir uns für Zeitreihe, die aus Messungen gewonnen werden oder aus einer Zeitdiskretisierung kontinuierlicher Modelle resultieren. In dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir die Irreversibilität von Zeitreihen unter Berücksichtigung der statistischen Eigenschaften ihrer Zeitumkehrung, und leiten daraus ein Fluktuationstheorem ab, das für Signal-Antwort-Modelle gilt, und das Irreversibilität sowie bedingte Informationen mit der Vergangenheit verknüpft. Interagierende Systeme tauschen kontinuierlich Informationen aus und beeinflussen sich gegenseitig. Intuitiv ist der kausale Einfluss der Effekt dieser Wechselwirkungen, der im Hinblick auf den Informationsfluss über die Zeit beobachtet werden kann, aber seine quantitative Definition wird in der Fachgemeinschaft immer noch diskutiert. Wir wenden insbesondere das Schema der partiellen Informationszerlegung (PID) an, das kürzlich definiert wurde, um synergistische und redundante Effekte aus informationstheoretischen Maßen zu entfernen. Hier schlagen wir unsere PID vor und diskutieren die resultierende Definition des kausalen Einflusses für den Sonderfall linearer Signal-Antwort-Modelle. / Information thermodynamics is the current trend in statistical physics. It is the theoretical research of a unified framework for the description of nonequilibrium features of stochastic dynamical systems like work dissipation and the irreversibility of trajectories, using the language of fluctuation theorems and information theory. The model-independent nature of information and irreversibility allows a wide applicability of the theory to more general (nonphysical) models from systems biology and quantitative finance, where asymmetric interactions and nonlinearities are ubiquitous. In particular, we are interested in time series obtained from measurements or resulting from a time discretization of continuous models. In this thesis we study the irreversibility of time series considering the statistical properties of their time-reversal, and we derive a fluctuation theorem that holds for time series of signal-response models, and that links irreversibility and conditional information towards past. Interacting systems continuously share information while influencing each other dynamics. Intuitively, the causal influence is the effect of those interactions observed in terms of information flow over time, but its quantitative definition is still under debate in the community. In particular, we adopt the scheme of partial information decomposition (PID), that was recently defined in the attempt to remove synergistic and redundant effects from information-theoretic measures. Here we propose our PID, and motivate the resulting definition of causal influence for the special case of linear signal-response models. The thermodynamic role of causal influences can only be discussed for time series of linear signal-response models in the continuous limit, and its generalization to general time series remains in our opinion the open problem in information thermodynamics.