We present a direct experimental investigation of the thermal ordering in an artificial analogue of an asymmetric two dimensional Ising system composed of a rectangular array of nano-fabricated magnetostatically interacting islands. During fabrication and below a critical thickness of the magnetic material the islands are thermally fluctuating and thus the system is able to explore its phase space. Above the critical thickness the islands freeze-in resulting in an arrested thermalized state for the array. Determining the magnetic state of the array we demonstrate a genuine artificial two-dimensional Ising system which can be analyzed in the context of nearest neighbour interactions.
@article{arxiv.1507.01126,
title = {A new look on the two-dimensional Ising model: thermal artificial spins},
author = {Unnar B. Arnalds and Jonathan Chico and Henry Stopfel and Vassilios Kapaklis and Oliver Bärenbold and Marc A. Verschuuren and Ulrike Wolff and Volker Neu and Anders Bergman and Björgvin Hjörvarsson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.01126},
year = {2016}
}