The current spin on manganites

In a material, the existence and coexistence of phases with very different magnetic and electronic properties is both unusual and surprising. Manganites in particular capture the imagination because they demonstrate a complexity that belies their chemically single-phase nature. This complexity arises because the magnetic, electronic and crystal structures interact with one another to deliver exotic magnetic and electronic phases that coexist. This coexistence is self-organized and yet readily susceptible to external perturbations, permitting subtle and imaginative experiments of the type that we describe here. Moreover, these experiments reveal that each competing phase itself remains an incompletely solved mystery.