Abstract

Spin ice materials represent an intriguing class of frustrated magnetic systems which, through their geometry, admit an exponential number of approximately degenerate configurations. In this paper, the relaxation properties of a thermally active artificial kagome spin ice system are studied. Through application of an external magnetic field, an out-of-equilibrium vertex charge ordered configuration is selected and relaxed under approximate zero-field conditions. Using x-ray photo-emission electron microscopy, the magnetic moment and vertex charge degrees of freedom are followed in space and time, revealing different dynamics to that seen in past athermal equilibration protocols, and a relaxation which is well described by a point-dipolar model system. Furthermore the charge correlations are found to relax with a time scale several times smaller than that of the moment correlations.