We discuss our very interesting experimental observation that the low-temperature two-phase coexistence in half-doped manganites is multi-valued (at any field) in that we can tune the coexisting antiferromagnetic-insulating(AF-I) and the ferromagnetic-metallic(FM-M) phase-fractions by following different paths in (H,T) space. We have shown experimentally that the phase-fraction, in this two-phase coexistence, can take continuous infinity of values. All but one of these are metastable, and two-phase coexistence is not an equilibrium state.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0703140,
title = {Two-phase coexistence is tunable and is not the equilibrium state in half-doped manganites},
author = {P. Chaddah and A. Banerjee},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0703140},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
Manuscript of invited talk at MESODIS Conference at IIT, Kanpur, December 2006