  Artificial spin ices are ensembles of geometrically-arranged, interacting
nanomagnets which have shown promising potential for the realization of
reconfigurable magnonic crystals. Such systems allow for the manipulation of
spin waves on the nanoscale and their potential use as information carriers.
However, there are presently two general obstacles to the realization of
artificial spin ice-based magnonic crystals: the magnetic state of artificial
spin ices is difficult to reconfigure and the magnetostatic interactions
between the nanoislands are often weak, preventing mode coupling. We
demonstrate, using micromagnetic modeling, that coupling a reconfigurable
artificial spin ice geometry made of weakly interacting nanomagnets to a soft
magnetic underlayer creates a complex system exhibiting dynamically coupled
modes. These give rise to spin wave channels in the underlayer at well-defined
frequencies, based on the artificial spin ice magnetic state, which can be
reconfigured. These findings open the door to the realization of reconfigurable
magnonic crystals with potential applications for data transport and processing
in magnonic-based logic architectures.
