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Emergent magnetic monopole dynamics in macroscopically degenerate artificial spin ice

Type of publication Peer-reviewed
Publikationsform Original article (peer-reviewed)
Author Farhan Alan, Saccone Michael, Petersen Charlotte F., Dhuey Scott, Chopdekar Rajesh V., Huang Yen-Lin, Kent Noah, Chen Zuhuang, Alava Mikko J., Lippert Thomas, Scholl Andreas, van Dijken Sebastiaan,
Project Emergent Phenomena in Artificial Frustrated Systems and Oxide Superlattices
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Original article (peer-reviewed)

Journal Science Advances
Volume (Issue) 5(2)
Page(s) eaav6380 - eaav6380
Title of proceedings Science Advances
DOI 10.1126/sciadv.aav6380

Open Access

URL http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/2/eaav6380
Type of Open Access Publisher (Gold Open Access)

Abstract

Magnetic monopoles, proposed as elementary particles that act as isolated magnetic south and north poles, have long attracted research interest as magnetic analogs to electric charge. In solid-state physics, a classical analog to these elusive particles has emerged as topological excitations within pyrochlore spin ice systems. We present the first real-time imaging of emergent magnetic monopole motion in a macroscopically degenerate artificial spin ice system consisting of thermally activated Ising-type nanomagnets lithographically arranged onto a pre-etched silicon substrate. A real-space characterization of emergent magnetic monopoles within the framework of Debye-Hückel theory is performed, providing visual evidence that these topological defects act like a plasma of Coulomb-type magnetic charges. In contrast to vertex defects in a purely two-dimensional artificial square ice, magnetic monopoles are free to evolve within a divergence-free vacuum, a magnetic Coulomb phase, for which features in the form of pinch-point singularities in magnetic structure factors are observed.
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