Enhancement of equilibrium fraction by heterogeneous nucleation in a "phase separated" half-doped manganite

Abstract

Glass-like arrest of kinetics has been observed across many magnetic first-order transitions. By traversing the two control variable H-T space, tunable coexisting fractions of arrested and equilibrium phases have been observed. We report here a fortuitous situation in a half-doped manganite sample, where these features occur by varying only temperature (T) along the H=0 line. The resistivity at 5 K rises by more than a factor of three provided second cool-down is effected from a specified intermediate T. This significant enhancement results from heterogeneous nucleation during second cool-down of regions that were kinetically arrested during first cool-down.