Spin ice materials are magnetic substances in which the spin directions map
onto hydrogen positions in water ice. Recently this analogy has been elevated
to an electromagnetic equivalence, indicating that the spin ice state is a
Coulomb phase, with magnetic monopole excitations analogous to ice's mobile
ionic defects. No Coulomb phase has yet been proved in a real magnetic
material, as the key experimental signature is difficult to resolve in most
systems. Here we measure the scattering of polarised neutrons from the
prototypical spin ice Ho2Ti2O7. This enables us to separate different
contributions to the magnetic correlations to clearly demonstrate the existence
of an almost perfect Coulomb phase in this material. The temperature dependence
of the scattering is consistent with the existence of deconfined magnetic
monopoles connected by Dirac strings of divergent length.Comment: 18 pages, 4 fig