480 Ch.

8 Ferromagnetism in Hubbard Models

effect is confined to the composition range where TC N T,.If Tc and

T, are sufficiently different then H = 7T cannot shift Ts by more than
a couple of degrees.
We mention in passing another field-induced effect: namely, that
the electrical resistivity p can be strongly affected by an external mag-
netic field. Manganite physics abounds with remarkable examples of
this: we choose the behaviour Pro.sSro.sMnO3 [402] as an illustration
(Fig. 8.13) because we will return to this system in a different context
shortly. For the FM phase, it is generally found that if T is near Tc,
then applying a field can strongly suppress spin disorder scattering, and
thereby p is decreased. This negative magnetoresistance effect (which
can be measured by ( p ( H )- p ( O ) ) / p ( H ) ) tends to be quite strong in the
manganites, which is indeed one of the reasons for the great interest in
this class of materials [192]. Still stronger effects are seen when the field
induces a sharp metal-insulator transition; since p may change by sev-
eral orders of magnitude, the absolute value of the ratio defined above
can easily attain 100000%, justifying the widely used phrase “colossal
magnetoresistance effect”.

Charge Ordering
Substituting La with a divalent cation in LaMn03, the resulting system
can be envisaged as a mixture of Mn3+ and Mn4+ ions. Up to now,
we have only considered on-site interactions, and the induced intersite
spin-spin interactions, but certainly there is also a Coulomb repulsion
between the excess eg electrons of the Mn3+ sites. This tries to keep
the Mn3+ sites away from each other. The effect should be most no-
ticeable at the 50-50 composition, because then the eg-eg repulsion is
minimized by forming a two-sublattice structure46. Whether this ac-
tually takes place, depends on the effective eg bandwidth; the kinetic
energy prefers that the eg electrons form a uniform Fermi sea. We are
4EEasilydone since in an ideal perovskite, the sublattice of the Mn ions is cubic.
It may get distorted in various ways but its bipartite nature remains recognizable.
If the charge densities on the two sublattices differ only mildly, we speak of a small-
amplitude, commensurate density wave. However, if the charge modulation is strong,
approximating the alternation of Mn3+ and Mn4+ sites, then the system may be
called a Wigner crystal.