Coulomb interaction and stability of CE-type structure in half-doped manganites, reply

In his Comment (cond-mat/0104353), Shen points out that the on-site Coulomb interaction, that can cause charge order in half-doped manganites, also destabilizes the magnetic CE-phase observed in these systems. This is a valid observation, but it is not a priori clear whether in the relevant parameter regime the C-phase is indeed lower in energy then the CE-phase within our model. We conclude that the proposed model, which correctly captures the interplay of spin, charge and orbital degrees of freedom in the half-doped manganites and gives a reasonable description of their electronic structure, is by itself not sufficient for the precise determination of the regions of stabilities of different phases. For this several other factors should be taken into account.