Local Irreversible phase reconfiguration and thermal-memory effects in a highly-correlated manganite

Abstract

Phase-separated manganites provide a unique platform to study the dynamics of competing electronic and structural orders in correlated systems. In La0.275Pr0.35Ca0.375MnO3 (LPCMO), we use temperature-cycling Raman spectroscopy to uncover a previously unidentified regime of structural irreversibility, emerging from the interplay between lattice distortions and phase competition across the phase-separation and charge-orbital ordering temperatures. This irreversible behavior encodes a thermal-memory effect reflecting the system's history-dependent energy landscape. Correlated magnetic and transport responses confirm the coupling between lattice and electronic degrees of freedom, revealing a new form of nonequilibrium phase dynamics in mixed-valence oxides. These results advance the understanding of metastability and memory phenomena in strongly correlated materials.