Eur. Phys. J. B (2016) 89: 151
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2016-70159-6

Regular Article

Bilayer splitting versus Fermi-surface warping as an origin of slow oscillations of in-plane magnetoresistance in rare-earth tritellurides

¹ L.D. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, 142432 Chernogolovka, Russia
² National University of Science and Technology “MISiS”, 119049 Moscow, Russia
³ Institut Laue-Langevin, BP 156, 6 rue Jules Horowitz, 38042 Grenoble, France
⁴ Kotel’nikov Institute of Radioengineering and Electronics of RAS, Mokhovaya 11-7, 125009 Moscow, Russia
⁵ National Research Nuclear University (MEPhI), 115409 Moscow, Russia
⁶ Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Inst. Neel, 38042 Grenoble, France
⁷ CNRS, Inst. Neel, 38042 Grenoble, France
⁸ Institute of Solid State Physics, Chernogolovka, 142432 Moscow region, Russia
⁹ Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Dolgoprudnyi, 141700 Moscow region, Russia

^a e-mail: grigorev@itp.ac.ru

Received: 10 March 2016
Received in final form: 7 May 2016
Published online: 15 June 2016

Abstract

Slow oscillations (SlO) of the in-plane magnetoresistance with a frequency less than 4 T are observed in the rare-earth tritellurides and proposed as an effective tool to explore the electronic structure in various strongly anisotropic quasi-two-dimensional compounds. Contrary to the usual Shubnikov-de-Haas oscillations, SlO originate not from small Fermi-surface pockets, but from the entanglement of close frequencies due to a finite interlayer transfer integral, either between the two Te planes forming a bilayer or between two adjacent bilayers. From the observed angular dependence of the frequency and the phase of SlO we argue that they originate from the bilayer splitting rather than from the Fermi-surface warping. The SlO frequency gives the value of the interlayer transfer integral ≈1 meV for TbTe₃ and GdTe₃.