No Arabic abstract
Artificial square spin ices are structures composed of magnetic elements arranged on a geometrically frustrated lattice and located on the sites of a two-dimensional square lattice, such that there are four interacting magnetic elements at each vertex. Using a semi-analytical approach, we show that square spin ices exhibit a rich spin wave band structure that is tunable both by external magnetic fields and the configuration of individual elements. Internal degrees of freedom can give rise to equilibrium states with bent magnetization at the edges leading to characteristic excitations; in the presence of magnetostatic interactions these form separate bands analogous to impurity bands in semiconductors. Full-scale micromagnetic simulations corroborate our semi-analytical approach. Our results show that artificial square spin ices can be viewed as reconfigurable and tunable magnonic crystals that can be used as metamaterials for spin-wave-based applications at the nanoscale.
Artificial spin ices are ensembles of geometrically-arranged, interacting nanomagnets which have shown promising potential for the realization of reconfigurable magnonic crystals. Such systems allow for the manipulation of spin waves on the nanoscale and their potential use as information carriers. However, there are presently two general obstacles to the realization of artificial spin ice-based magnonic crystals: the magnetic state of artificial spin ices is difficult to reconfigure and the magnetostatic interactions between the nanoislands are often weak, preventing mode coupling. We demonstrate, using micromagnetic modeling, that coupling a reconfigurable artificial spin ice geometry made of weakly interacting nanomagnets to a soft magnetic underlayer creates a complex system exhibiting dynamically coupled modes. These give rise to spin wave channels in the underlayer at well-defined frequencies, based on the artificial spin ice magnetic state, which can be reconfigured. These findings open the door to the realization of reconfigurable magnonic crystals with potential applications for data transport and processing in magnonic-based logic architectures.
Strongly-interacting artificial spin systems are moving beyond mimicking naturally-occuring materials to find roles as versatile functional platforms, from reconfigurable magnonics to designer magnetic metamaterials. Typically artificial spin systems comprise nanomagnets with a single magnetisation texture: collinear macrospins or chiral vortices. By tuning nanoarray dimensions we achieve macrospin/vortex bistability and demonstrate a four-state metamaterial spin-system Artificial Spin-Vortex Ice (ASVI). ASVI is capable of adopting Ising-like macrospins with strong ice-like vertex interactions, in addition to weakly-coupled vortices with low stray dipolar-field. The enhanced bi-texture microstate space gives rise to emergent physical memory phenomena, with ratchet-like vortex training and history-dependent nonlinear training dynamics. We observe vortex-domain formation alongside MFM tip vortex-writing. Tip-written vortices dramatically alter local reversal and memory dynamics. Vortices and macrospins exhibit starkly-differing spin-wave spectra with analogue-style mode-amplitude control via vortex training and mode-frequency shifts of df = 3.8 GHz. We leverage spin-wave spectral fingerprinting for rapid, scaleable readout of vortex and macrospin populations over complex training-protocols with applicability for functional magnonics and physical memory.
Magnetization dynamics in an artificial square spin-ice lattice made of Ni80Fe20 with magnetic field applied in the lattice plane is investigated by broadband ferromagnetic resonance spectroscopy. The experimentally observed dispersion shows a rich spectrum of modes corresponding to different magnetization states. These magnetization states are determined by exchange and dipolar interaction between individual islands, as is confirmed by a semianalytical model. In the low field regime below 400 Oe a hysteretic behavior in the mode spectrum is found. Micromagnetic simulations reveal that the origin of the observed spectra is due to the initialization of different magnetization states of individual nanomagnets. Our results indicate that it might be possible to determine the spin-ice state by resonance experiments and are a first step towards the understanding of artificial geometrically frustrated magnetic systems in the high-frequency regime.
Over the past few years, the study of magnetization dynamics in artificial spin ices has become a vibrant field of study. Artificial spin ices are ensembles of geometrically arranged, interacting magnetic nanoislands, which display frustration by design. These were initially created to mimic the behavior in rare earth pyrochlore materials and to study emergent behavior and frustration using two-dimensional magnetic measurement techniques. Recently, it has become clear that it is possible to create artificial spin ices, which can potentially be used as functional materials. In this Perspective, we review the resonant behavior of spin ices (which is in the GHz frequency range), focusing on their potential application as magnonic crystals. In magnonic crystals, spin waves are functionalized for logic applications by means of band structure engineering. While it has been established that artificial spin ices can possess rich mode spectra, the applicability of spin ices to create magnonic crystals hinges upon their reconfigurability. Consequently, we describe recent work aiming to develop techniques and create geometries allowing full reconfigurability of the spin ice magnetic state. We also discuss experimental, theoretical, and numerical methods for determining the spectral response of artificial spin ices, and give an outlook on new directions for reconfigurable spin ices.
The properties of natural and artificial assemblies of interacting elements, ranging from Quarks to Galaxies, are at the heart of Physics. The collective response and dynamics of such assemblies are dictated by the intrinsic dynamical properties of the building blocks, the nature of their interactions and topological constraints. Here we report on the relaxation dynamics of the magnetization of artificial assemblies of mesoscopic spins. In our model nano-magnetic system - square artificial spin ice - we are able to control the geometrical arrangement and interaction strength between the magnetically interacting building blocks by means of nano-lithography. Using time resolved magnetometry we show that the relaxation process can be described using the Kohlrausch law and that the extracted temperature dependent relaxation times of the assemblies follow the Vogel-Fulcher law. The results provide insight into the relaxation dynamics of mesoscopic nano-magnetic model systems, with adjustable energy and time scales, and demonstrates that these can serve as an ideal playground for the studies of collective dynamics and relaxations.