title: Disorder strength and field-driven ground state domain formation in artificial spin ice: experiment, simulation, and theory.
abstract: Quenched disorder affects how nonequilibrium systems respond to driving. In the context of artificial spin ice, an athermal system comprised of geometrically frustrated classical Ising spins with a twofold degenerate ground state, we give experimental and numerical evidence of how such disorder washes out edge effects and provide an estimate of disorder strength in the experimental system. We prove analytically that a sequence of applied fields with fixed amplitude is unable to drive the system to its ground state from a saturated state. These results should be relevant for other systems where disorder does not change the nature of the ground state.
authors.affiliation: School of Physics, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009, Australia. zoe.budrikis@gmail.com
authors.forename: Zoe
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Budrikis
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Morgan
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Akerman
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stein
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Politi
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Langridge
authors.forename: C H
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Marrows
authors.forename: R L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Stamps