Artificial Magnetic Tripod Ice.

We study the collective behavior of interacting arrays of nanomagnetic tripods. These objects have six discrete moment states, in contrast to the usual two states of an Ising-like moment. Our experimental data demonstrate that triangular lattice arrays form a "tripod ice" that exhibits charge ordering among the effective vertex magnetic charges, in direct analogy to artificial kagome spin ice. The results indicate that the interacting tripods have effective moments that act as emergent local variables, with strong connections to the well-studied Potts and clock models. In addition, the tripod moments display a tendency toward a nearest neighbor alignment in our thermalized samples that separates this system from kagome spin ice. Our results open a path toward the study of the collective behavior of nonbinary moments that is unavailable in other physical systems.

我们研究了相互作用的纳米磁性三脚架阵列的集体行为。这些物体具有六个离散的磁矩状态，这与伊辛型磁矩通常的两个状态形成对比。我们的实验数据表明，三角晶格阵列形成了一种“三脚架冰”，在有效的顶点磁荷之间呈现出电荷有序性，这与人工戈薇自旋冰直接类似。结果表明，相互作用的三脚架具有作为涌现局部变量的有效磁矩，与被充分研究的波茨模型和时钟模型有紧密联系。此外，在我们的热化样本中，三脚架磁矩显示出一种趋向于最近邻排列的趋势，这使得该系统有别于戈薇自旋冰。我们的研究结果为研究在其他物理系统中无法获得的非二元磁矩的集体行为开辟了一条道路。