Unhappy Vertices in Artificial Spin Ice: Degeneracy from Vertex-Frustration

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to design artificial spin ice with extensive degeneracy by exploiting vertex frustration, leading to new geometries with residual entropy from vertex arrangements rather than individual vertex states.

Contribution

It demonstrates how to create diverse degenerate artificial spin ice geometries using vertex frustration, expanding beyond traditional designs limited by magnetic anisotropy.

Findings

Engineered new degenerate geometries with vertex frustration.

Residual entropy arises from vertex arrangement, not vertex degeneracy.

Potential for fabricating extensively degenerate artificial spin ice.

Abstract

In 1935, Pauling estimated the residual entropy of water ice with remarkable accuracy by considering the degeneracy of the ice rule {\it solely at the vertex level}. Indeed, his estimate works well for both the three-dimensional pyrochlore lattice and the two-dimensional six-vertex model, solved by Lieb in 1967. The case of honeycomb artificial spin ice is similar: its pseudo-ice rule, like the ice rule in Pauling and Lieb's systems, simply extends a degeneracy which is already present in the vertices to the global ground state. The anisotropy of the magnetic interaction limits the design of inherently degenerate vertices in artificial spin ice, and the honeycomb is the only degenerate array produced so far. In this paper we show how to engineer artificial spin ice in a virtually infinite variety of degenerate geometries built out of non-degenerate vertices. In this new class of vertex models, the residual entropy follows not from a freedom of choice at the vertex level, but from the nontrivial relative arrangement of the vertices themselves. In such arrays, loops exist along which not all of the vertices can be chosen in their lowest energy configuration: these loops are therefore vertex-frustrated since they contain unhappy vertices. Residual entropy emerges in these lattices as configurational freedom in allocating the unhappy vertices of the ground state. These new geometries will finally allow for the fabrication of many novel extensively degenerate artificial spin ice.