Direct visualization of vortex ice in a nanostructured superconductor

Abstract

Artificial ice systems have unique physical properties promising for potential applications. One of the most challenging issues in this field is to find novel ice systems that allows a precise control over the geometries and many-body interactions. Superconducting vortex matter has been proposed as a very suitable candidate to study artificial ice, mainly due to availability of tunable vortex-vortex interactions and the possibility to fabricate a variety of nanoscale pinning potential geometries. So far, a detailed imaging of the local configurations in a vortex-based artificial ice system is still lacking. Here we present a direct visualization of the vortex ice state in a nanostructured superconductor. By using the scanning Hall probe microscopy, a large area with the vortex ice ground state configuration has been detected, which confirms the recent theoretical predictions for this new ice system. Besides the defects analogous to artificial spin ice systems, other types of defects have been visualized and identified. We also demonstrate the possibility to realize different types of defects by varying the magnetic field.

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Unexpected Phenomenology in Particle-Based Ice Absent in Magnetic Spin Ice
• Tunable artificial vortex ice in nanostructured superconductors with frustrated kagome lattice of paired antidots
• Vortex Dynamics, Pinning, and Magic Angles on Moiré Patterns
• Coreless vortices as direct signature of chiral $d$-wave superconductivity
• Robust and tunable coreless vortices and fractional vortices in chiral $d$-wave superconductors
• SuperConga: an open-source framework for mesoscopic superconductivity
• Enhanced chiral edge currents and orbital magnetic moment in chiral $d$-wave superconductors from mesoscopic finite-size effects
• Vortex Ordering and Dynamics on Santa Fe Artificial Ice Pinning Arrays
• Disorder-induced trapping and anti-trapping of vortices in type-II superconductors