Fermi Surface - Experimental Determination

Experimental Determination

Electronic Fermi surfaces have been measured through observation of the oscillation of transport properties in magnetic fields, for example the de Haas-van Alphen effect (dHvA) and the Shubnikov–de Haas effect (SdH). The former is an oscillation in magnetic susceptibility and the latter in resistivity. The oscillations are periodic versus and occur because of the quantization of energy levels in the plane perpendicular to a magnetic field, a phenomenon first predicted by Lev Landau. The new states are called Landau levels and are separated by an energy where is called the cyclotron frequency, is the electronic charge, is the electron effective mass and is the speed of light. In a famous result, Lars Onsager proved that the period of oscillation is related to the cross-section of the Fermi surface (typically given in ) perpendicular to the magnetic field direction by the equation . Thus the determination of the periods of oscillation for various applied field directions allows mapping of the Fermi surface.

Observation of the dHvA and SdH oscillations requires magnetic fields large enough that the circumference of the cyclotron orbit is smaller than a mean free path. Therefore dHvA and SdH experiments are usually performed at high-field facilities like the High Field Magnet Laboratory in Netherlands, Grenoble High Magnetic Field Laboratory in France, the Tsukuba Magnet Laboratory in Japan or the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in the United States.

The most direct experimental technique to resolve the electronic structure of crystals in the momentum-energy space (see reciprocal lattice), and, consequently, the Fermi surface, is the angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). An example of the Fermi surface of superconducting cuprates measured by ARPES is shown in figure.

With positron annihilation the two photons carry the momentum of the electron away; as the momentum of a thermalized positron is negligible, in this way also information about the momentum distribution can be obtained. Because the positron can be polarized, also the momentum distribution for the two spin states in magnetized materials can be obtained. Another advantage with de Haas–Van Alphen-effect is that the technique can be applied to non-dilute alloys. In this way the first determination of a smeared Fermi surface in a 30% alloy was obtained in 1978.