Emergent ice rule and magnetic charge screening from vertex frustration in artificial spin ice

Artificial spin ice comprises a class of frustrated arrays of interacting single-domain ferromagnetic nanostructures. Previous studies of artificial spin ice have focused on simple lattices based on natural frustrated materials. Here we experimentally examine artificial spin ice created on the shakti lattice, a structure that does not directly correspond to any known natural magnetic material. On the shakti lattice, none of the near-neighbour interactions is locally frustrated, but instead the lattice topology frustrates the interactions leading to a high degree of degeneracy. We demonstrate that the shakti system achieves a physical realization of the classic six-vertex model ground state. Furthermore, we observe that the mixed coordination of the shakti lattice leads to crystallization of effective magnetic charges and the screening of magnetic excitations, underscoring the importance of magnetic charge as the relevant degree of freedom in artificial spin ice and opening new possibilities for studies of its dynamics.