Multiple energy scales in mesospin systems : the vertex-frustrated Saint George lattice

The interplay between topology and energy hierarchy plays a vital role in the collective magnetic order in artificial ferroic systems. Here we investigate, experimentally, the effect of having one or two activation energies of interacting Ising-like magnetic islands—mesospins—in thermalized, vertex-frustrated lattices. The thermally arrested magnetic states of the elements were determined using synchrotron-based magnetic microscopy after cooling the samples from temperatures above the Curie temperature of the material. Statistical analysis of the correlations between mesospins across several length scales reveals changes in the magnetic order, reflecting the amount of ground state plaquettes realized for a vertex-frustrated lattice. We show that the latter depends on the presence, or not, of different activation energies