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Quantum oscillations in interaction-driven insulators

by Andrew A. Allocca, Nigel R. Cooper

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Submission summary

Authors (as registered SciPost users): Andrew Allocca · Nigel Cooper
Submission information
Preprint Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.14643v2  (pdf)
Date accepted: 2022-03-22
Date submitted: 2022-03-10 12:21
Submitted by: Allocca, Andrew
Submitted to: SciPost Physics
Ontological classification
Academic field: Physics
Specialties:
  • Condensed Matter Physics - Theory
Approach: Theoretical

Abstract

In recent years it has become understood that quantum oscillations of the magnetization as a function of magnetic field, long recognized as phenomena intrinsic to metals, can also manifest in insulating systems. Theory has shown that in certain simple band insulators, quantum oscillations can appear with a frequency set by the area traced by the minimum gap in momentum space, and are suppressed for weak fields by an intrinsic "Dingle damping" factor reflecting the size of the bandgap. Here we examine quantum oscillations of the magnetization in excitonic and Kondo insulators, for which interactions play a crucial role. In models of these systems, self-consistent parameters themselves oscillate with changing magnetic field, generating additional contributions to quantum oscillations. In the low-temperature, weak-field regime, we find that the lowest harmonic of quantum oscillations of the magnetization are unaffected, so that the zero-field bandgap can still be extracted by measuring the Dingle damping factor of this harmonic. However, these contributions dominate quantum oscillations at all higher harmonics, thereby providing a route to measure this interaction effect.

Author comments upon resubmission

We would like to thank the referees for their careful reading of our paper, their insightful comments and questions, and positive assessment of the work we present. In the resubmission we have made additions and revisions, outlined below, to address the points they raised in their reports, and hope that after doing so the paper is acceptable for publication in SciPost Physics.

Thank you,
Andrew Allocca and Nigel Cooper

List of changes

- Added several additional references to relevant work in the introduction
- Added a brief explanation in Section 2 of why we say we are working in 2d, and how our work could be extended to 3d
- Added a comment and references about how the mean field formalism we use can be extended to consider fluctuations
- Added a discussion in Section 3 of how our work relates to that in Ref. 21 (Refs. 28 and 29 in this version)
- Added an explanation in Section 3 of how our results depend only on a single dimensionless quantity and what that means for the observability of the effects we find, regardless of material parameters
- Added subsection 3.2 discussing the effects of nonzero temperature beyond what we explicitly examine in Appendix C
- Added a paragraph in the conclusion about the effect our results may have for non-thermodynamic quantities
- Fixed minor typos and wording throughout

Published as SciPost Phys. 12, 123 (2022)

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