Coarse grained models in Coulomb frustrated phase separation

Competition between interactions on different length scales leads to self-organized textures in classical as well as quantum systems. This pattern formation phenomenon has been invoked to explain some intriguing properties of a large variety of strongly correlated electronic systems that includes for example high temperature superconductors and colossal magnetoresistance manganites. We classify the more common situations in which Coulomb frustrated phase separation can occur and review their properties.