Effect of carrier doping on the formation and collapse of magnetic polarons in lightly hole-doped La1-xSrxCoO3

We investigate the doping dependence of the nanoscale electronic and magnetic inhomogeneities in the hole-doping range 0.002 < x < 0.1 of cobalt based perovskites, La{sub 1-x}Sr{sub x}CoO{sub 3}. Using single-crystal inelastic neutron scattering and magnetization measurements we show that the lightly doped system exhibits magnetoelectronic phase separation in the form of spin-state polarons. Higher hole doping leads to a decay of spin-state polarons in favor of larger scale magnetic clusters, due to competing ferromagnetic correlations of Co{sup 3+} ions which are formed by neighboring polarons. The present data give evidence for two regimes of magnetoelectronic phase separation in this system: (i) x {approx}< 0.05, dominated by ferromagnetic intrapolaron interactions, and (ii) x {approx}> 0.05, dominated by Co{sup 3+}-Co{sup 3+} intracluster interactions. Our conclusions are in good agreement with a recently proposed model of the phase separation in cobalt perovskites.