Signatures of surface states in bismuth at high magnetic fields

Babak Seradjeh, Jiansheng Wu, Philip Phillips

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Electrons in a metal subject to a magnetic field commonly exhibit oscillatory behavior as the field strength varies, with a period set by the area of quantized electronic orbits. Recent experiments on elemental bismuth have revealed oscillations for fields above 9 T that do not follow this simple dependence and have been interpreted as a signature of electron fractionalization in the bulk. We argue instead that a simple explanation in terms of the surface states of bismuth exists when additional features of the experiment are included. These surface electrons are known to have significant spin-orbit interaction. We show the observed oscillations are in quantitative agreement with the surface theory, which we propose to test by studying the effect of the Zeeman coupling in higher fields, dependence on the field orientation, and the thickness of the samples.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number136803
JournalPhysical review letters
Volume103
Issue number13
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 25 2009

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physics and Astronomy(all)

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