The self-organised phases of manganites

Self-organisation requires a multi-component system. In turn, a multi-component system requires that there exist conditions in which more than one component is robust enough to survive. This is the case in the manganites because the free energies of surprisingly dissimilar competing states can be similar—even in continuous systems that are chemically homogeneous. Here we describe the basic physics of the manganites and the nature of the competing phases. Using Landau theory we speculate on the exotic textures that may be created on a mesoscopic length scale of several unit cells.