Tracking topological defects in a plasma state of a quenched colloidal ice

In frustrated spin systems, creation and annihilation of topological defects are processes that are hard to characterize and information about them is often extracted by measuring averaged quantities without direct visualization of their dynamics. Here we show that, in a quenched colloidal ice, an external force can be used to generate a plasma state of topological defects which are continuously created and destroyed with bias-dependent rates. By developing a general tracking algorithm which can be extended to other artificial spin systems, we fully characterize the statistical properties and the kinetics of the generation-recombination process at the steady state, both in the plasma regime and far from it. Further, we determine the defects' waiting and survival time distributions which unveil a maximum lifetime in the plasma regime where the string tension is minimized.