Solitonic Phase in Manganites

Abstract

Whenever a symmetry in the ground state of a system is broken, topological defects will exist. These defects are essential for understanding phase transitions in low dimensional systems[1]. Excitingly in some unique condensed matter systems the defects are also the low energy electric charge excitations. This is the case of skyrmions in quantum Hall ferromagnets[2] and solitons in polymers[3]. Orbital order present in several transitions metal compounds[4-6] could give rise to topological defects. Here we argue that the topological defects in orbital ordered half doped manganites are orbital solitons. Surprisingly, these solitons carry a fractional charge of $\pm$e/2, and whenever extra charge is added to the system an array of solitons is formed and an incommensurate solitonic phase occurs. The striking experimental asymmetry in the phase diagram as electrons or holes are added to half doped manganites[7-12], is explained by the energy difference between positive and negative charged solitons. Contrary to existent models that explain coexistence between phases in manganites as an extrinsic effect[13-14], the presence of inhomogeneities is naturally explained by the existence of solitonic phases. The occurrence and relevance of orbital solitons might be a general phenomena in strongly correlated systems.

10 pages, 5 figures included

References in corpus (3)

• Coexisting charge modulation and ferromagnetism produces long period phases in manganites: new example of electronic soft matter
• Weak charge-lattice coupling requires reinterpretation of stripes of charge order in La1-xCaxMnO3
• Phase Diagram of Half Doped Manganites

Cited by in corpus (18)

• New phase transition in $P{r}_{1-x}C{a}_{x}Mn{O}_3$ system: evidence for electrical polarization in charge ordered manganites
• Multicritical end-point of the first-order ferromagnetic transition in colossal magnetoresistive manganites
• Electronic Phase Separation in Manganite/Insulator Interfaces
• Neutron scattering studies on stripe phases in non-cuprate materials
• Phase Diagram and Incommensurate Phases in Undoped Manganites
• Disorder-Induced First Order Transition and Curie Temperature Lowering in Ferromagnatic Manganites
• Jahn-Teller distortion induced charge-ordering in CE phase of manganites
• Topological Gapless Phases in Non-Symmorphic Antiferromagnets
• Instabilities and Insulator-Metal transitions in Half-Doped Manganites induced by Magnetic-Field and Doping
• Evidence for charge orbital and spin stripe order in an overdoped manganite
• Optical phase diagram of perovskite-type colossal magnetoresistance manganites with near-half doping
• Electron gas at the interface between two antiferromagnetic insulating manganites
• 139La NMR evidence for phase solitons in the ground state of overdoped manganites
• Charged Topological Solitons in Zigzag Graphene Nanoribbons
• Atomic-scale tracking of topological defect motion and incommensurate charge order melting
• A Real Space Description of Field Induced Melting in the Charge Ordered Manganites: II. the Disordered Case
• A Real Space Description of Magnetic Field Induced Melting in the Charge Ordered Manganites: I. The Clean Limit
• Topological end states in two-orbital double-exchange model for colossal magnetoresistive manganites