Ground state lost but degeneracy found: the effective thermodynamics of artificial spin ice

Phys Rev Lett. 2007 May 25;98(21):217203. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.217203. Epub 2007 May 23.

Abstract

We analyze the rotational demagnetization of artificial spin ice, a recently realized array of nanoscale single-domain ferromagnetic islands. Demagnetization does not anneal this model system into its antiferromagnetic ground state: the moments have a static disordered configuration similar to the frozen state of the spin ice materials. We demonstrate that this athermal system has an effective extensive degeneracy and we introduce a formalism that can predict the populations of local states in this icelike system with no adjustable parameters.