E. Dagotto

A wide variety of experimental results and theoretical investigations in recent years have convincingly demonstrated that several transition metal oxides and other materials have dominant states that are not spatially homogeneous. This occurs in cases in which several physical interactions-spin, charge, lattice, and/or orbital-are simultaneously active. This phenomenon causes interesting effects, such as colossal magnetoresistance, and it also appears crucial to understand the high-temperature superconductors. The spontaneous emergence of electronic nanometer-scale structures in transition metal oxides, and the existence of many competing states, are properties often associated with complex matter where nonlinearities dominate, such as soft materials and biological systems. This electronic complexity could have potential consequences for applications of correlated electronic materials, because not only charge (semiconducting electronic), or charge and spin (spintronics) are of relevance, but in addition the lattice and orbital degrees of freedom are active, leading to giant responses to small perturbations. Moreover, several metallic and insulating phases compete, increasing the potential for novel behavior.

We show that the symmetry of the spin zigzag chain E phase of the orthorhombic perovskite manganites and nickelates allows for the existence of a finite ferroelectric polarization. The proposed microscopic mechanism is independent of spin-orbit coupling. We predict that the polarization induced by the E-type magnetic order can potentially be enhanced by up to 2 orders of magnitude with respect to that in the spiral magnetic phases of TbMnO3 and similar multiferroic compounds.

The electron doping of undoped high-${T}_{c}$ cuprates via the transfer of charge from manganites (or other oxides) using heterostructure geometries is discussed theoretically here. This possibility is mainly addressed via a detailed analysis of photoemission and diffusion voltage experiments, which locate the Fermi level of manganites above the bottom of the upper-Hubbard band of some cuprate parent compounds. A diagram with the relative location of Fermi levels and gaps for several oxides is presented. The procedure discussed here is generic, allowing for the qualitative prediction of the charge flow direction at several oxide interfaces. The addition of electrons to antiferromagnetic Cu oxides may lead to a superconducting state at the interface with minimal quenched disorder. Model calculations using static and dynamical mean-field theory, supplemented by a Poisson equation formalism to address charge redistribution at the interface, support this view. The magnetic state of the manganites could be antiferromagnetic or ferromagnetic. The former is better to induce superconductivity than the latter, since the spin-polarized charge transfer will be detrimental to singlet superconductivity. It is concluded that in spite of the robust Hubbard gaps, the electron doping of undoped cuprates at interfaces appears possible, and its realization may open an exciting area of research in oxide heterostructures.

The metal-insulator transition is characterized as a single peak in the temperature-dependent resistivity measurements; exceptions to this have never been seen in any single crystal material system. We show that by reducing a single crystal manganite thin film to a wire with a width comparable to the mesoscopic phase-separated domains inherent in the material, a second and robust metal-insulator transition peak appears in the resistivity versus temperature measurement. This new observation suggests that spatial confinement is a promising route for the discovery of emergent physical phenomena in complex oxides.