Two Ferromagnetic States in Magnetoresistive Manganites - First Order Transition Driven by Orbitals -

A systematic study of the electronic structure in perovskite manganites is presented. The effective Hamiltonian is derived by taking into account the degeneracy of $e_g$ orbitals and strong electron correlation in Mn ions. The spin and orbital orderings are examined as functions of carrier concentration in the mean-field approximation applied to the effective Hamiltonian. We obtain the first order phase transition between ferromagnetic metallic and ferromagnetic insulating states in the lightly doped region. The transition is accompanied with the orbital order-disorder one which is directly observed in the anomalous X-ray scattering experiments. The present investigation shows a novel role of the orbital degree of freedom on metal-insulator transition in manganites.