CC BY 3.0 UnportedArnalds, Unnar B.Chico, JonathanStopfel, HenryKapaklis, VassiliosBärenbold, OliverVerschuuren, Marc A.Wolff, UlrikeNeu, VolkerBergman, AndersHjörvarsson, Björgvin2018-06-112019-06-282016https://doi.org/10.34657/1419https://oa.tib.eu/renate/handle/123456789/4340We 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 we demonstrate a genuine artificial two-dimensional Ising system which can be analyzed in the context of nearest neighbor interactions.application/pdfenghttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/530Magnetic orderingartificial spinsIsing modelArticle