Artificial Spin Systems: Frustration, computation, and new dimensions

Artificial spin systems are metamaterials built from magnetostatically-coupled single-domain nanomagnets. In the past decade, they have become a testbed to study emergent correlations and phase transitions in lattices with frustrated interactions, as properties of the individual nanomagnetic elements and the two-dimensional lattices they are arranged on can be designed at will. Furthermore, they allow to explore and implement novel functionalities, such as for magnonic crystals, for reconfigurable pinning centres for superconducting flux lines, or for nanomagnetic computation.

In this talk, Dr Leo will give a brief introduction into the field of artificial spin ices, and how spontaneous ordering phenomena can emerge from interacting superparamagnetic building blocks. They will then present resent results on nanomagnetic computation and how to use light-controlled plasmonic heating to implement fast logic gates, which offer the potential for novel low-powered computation schemes.