Artificial spin ice assisted creation and tuning of frustrated flux quanta*

We report the controlling of geometric frustration in a novel hybrid system consisting of a reconfigurable artificial spin ice placed on top a superconducting thin film. The magnetic charge ground state of the artificial-spin-ice generates an ice-like “two attractive, two repulsive” pinning potential for the underlying flux-quanta in the superconducting film. This creates a 2D geometrically frustrated flux-quantum system which possesses extensive degeneracy. The geometric frustration in this flux-quantum system can be transformed in-situ into a variety of crystallized states with different symmetries. We achieved this by either changing the flux-quanta density with magnetic field or reconfiguring the magnetic charge ordering of the artificial-spin-ice. A tangible direct result of this study is a tunable superconducting critical current and a flux-quantum rectifier.