%0 Journal Article
%T Melting artificial spin ice
%A Vassilios Kapaklis
%A Unnar B. Arnalds
%A Adam Harman-Clarke
%A Evangelos Th. Papaioannou
%A Masoud Karimipour
%A Panagiotis Korelis
%A Andrea Taroni
%A Peter C. W. Holdsworth
%A Steven T. Bramwell
%A Bj£¿rgvin Hj£¿rvarsson
%J Physics
%D 2011
%I arXiv
%R 10.1088/1367-2630/14/3/035009
%X Artificial spin ice arrays of micromagnetic islands are a means of engineering additional energy scales and frustration into magnetic materials. Despite much progress in elucidating the properties of such arrays, the `spins' in the systems studied so far have no thermal dynamics as the kinetic constraints are too high. Here we address this problem by using a material with an ordering temperature near room temperature. By measuring the temperature dependent magnetization in different principal directions, and comparing with simulations of idealized statistical mechanical models, we confirm a dynamical `pre-melting' of the artificial spin ice structure at a temperature well below the intrinsic ordering temperature of the island material. We thus create a spin ice array that has real thermal dynamics of the artificial spins over an extended temperature range.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.1092v2