Exploring frustrated magnetism with artificial spin ice

Nanomagnet arrays known as artificial spin ice provide insight into the microscopic details of frustrated magnetism because, unlike natural frustrated magnets, the individual moments can be experimentally resolved and the lattice geometry can be easily tuned. Most studies of artificial spin ice focus on two lattice geometries, the square and the kagome lattices, due to their direct correspondence to natural spin ice materials such as Dy2Ti2O7. In this work, we review experiments on these more unusual lattice geometries and introduce a new type of nanomagnet array, artificial spin glass. Artificial spin glass is a two-dimensional array of nanomagnets with random locations and orientations and is designed to elucidate the more complex frustration found in spin glass materials.