Abstract
Design and manipulation of magnetic moment arrays have been at the focus of studying the interesting cooperative physical phenomena in various magnetic systems. However, long-range ordered magnetic moments are rather difficult to achieve due to the excited states arising from the relatively weak exchange interactions between the localized moments. Here, using a nanostructured superconductor, we investigate a perfectly ordered magnetic dipole pattern with the magnetic poles having the same distribution as the magnetic charges in an artificial spin ice. The magnetic states can simply be switched on/off by applying a current flowing through nanopatterned area. Moreover, by coupling magnetic dipoles with the pinned vortex lattice, we are able to erase the positive/negative poles, resulting in a magnetic dipole pattern of only one polarity, analogous to the recently predicted vortex ice. These switchable and tunable magnetic dipole patterns open pathways for the study of exotic ordering phenomena in magnetic systems.
Highlights
Design and manipulation of magnetic moment arrays have been at the focus of studying the interesting cooperative physical phenomena in various magnetic systems
Artificial spin ice (ASI) systems provide an ideal platform to study these exotic phenomena under conditions of the controlled design of geometric frustration and real-space observation of local spin configurations[14,16,17,18,19,20]
In a square spin ice four ferromagnetic islands meet at the vertex of a square lattice, and four types of vertex configurations can be formed (Fig. 1b and Supplementary Fig. 1)
Summary
Design and manipulation of magnetic moment arrays have been at the focus of studying the interesting cooperative physical phenomena in various magnetic systems. In a square spin ice four ferromagnetic islands meet at the vertex of a square lattice, and four types of vertex configurations (as well as the corresponding types of magnetic charge distribution) can be formed (Fig. 1b and Supplementary Fig. 1). To realize long-range ordered ice states, Wang et al.[26] have redesigned an artificial pattern with ferromagnetic islands by focusing on the distribution of magnetic charges instead of spins.
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