Studies of Artificial Spin Ice at Brookhaven and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories

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Artificial spin ices are arrays of patterned nanomagnets. They make use of nanotechnology to reproduce many of the features found in the 'naturally-occurring' spin ices--pyrochlore crystals, in which rare earth moments are arranged meeting in groups of four at tetrahedral vertices so as to enforce geometric frustration--in a two-dimensional analog. In these artificial systems, all parameters can be specified by design and the exact configuration of the moments can be inspected using high resolution magnetic microscopy. As a result they offer exciting possibilities in studying statistical mechanical models in and out of thermal equilibrium, visualising phenomena such as fractionalised monopole excitations at room temperature in a way that is impossible in the pyrochlore systems, and exploring novel applications, such as using the 'magnetricity' of these monopoles to perform neuromorphic computing. Fabricating and studying these systems requires state-of-the-art facilities. Here we seek travel support to allow us to access three unique facilities at two US National Laboratories: the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) and the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), at all of which we have won facility time to study artificial spin ices through competitive peer review. We will fabricate samples at the extreme nanoscale at the CFN, and study them in reciprocal (NSLS) and real (ALS) space at the two synchrotron facilities.