Effect of many-body interaction on de Haas-van Alphen oscillations in insulators

Gurpreet Singh, Hridis K. Pal

Published 2022-10-19Version 1

De Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) oscillations are oscillations in the magnetization as a function of the inverse magnetic field. These oscillations are usually considered to be a property of the Fermi surface and, hence, a metallic property. Recently, however, such oscillations have been shown to arise, both experimentally and theoretically, in certain insulators which have a narrow gap and an inverted band structure. In this work, we develop a theory to study the effect of many-body interaction on these unconventional oscillations, perturbatively to leading order in the interaction strength. We find that interaction has an unusual effect on oscillations in insulators: It may enhance the amplitude in contrast to that in metals where it typically reduces the amplitude. The enhancement occurs both at zero and nonzero temperature and can be substantial in the regime where the gap parameter is comparable to the Landau level spacing.