Extremely large magnetoresistance in the "ordinary" metal ReO3

TL;DR

This study reveals that the simple nonmagnetic metal ReO3 exhibits extremely large magnetoresistance (XMR) similar to complex semimetals, driven by its unique Fermi surface topology and carrier compensation, challenging the notion that XMR requires topological properties.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a simple cubic metal ReO3 can exhibit XMR characteristics typically associated with topological semimetals, highlighting the importance of Fermi surface topology in XMR phenomena.

Findings

ReO3 shows nearly quadratic MR dependence on magnetic field.

Carrier compensation explains the unsaturated MR behavior.

Fermi surface topology is key to XMR in ReO3.

Abstract

The extremely large magnetoresistance (XMR) observed in many topologically nontrivial and trivial semimetals has attracted much attention in relation to its underlying physical mechanism. In this paper, by combining the band structure and Fermi surface (FS) calculations with the Hall resistivity and de Haas-Van Alphen (dHvA) oscillation measurements, we studied the anisotropy of magnetoresistance (MR) of ReO$_3$ with a simple cubic structure, an "ordinary" nonmagnetic metal considered previously. We found that ReO$_3$ exhibits almost all the characteristics of XMR semimetals: the nearly quadratic field dependence of MR, a field-induced upturn in resistivity followed by a plateau at low temperatures, high mobilities of charge carriers. It was found that for magnetic field \emph{H} applied along the \emph{c} axis, the MR exhibits an unsaturated \emph{H}$^{1.75}$ dependence, which was argued to arise from the complete carrier compensation supported by the Hall resistivity measurements. For \emph{H} applied along the direction of 15$^\circ$ relative to the \emph{c} axis, an unsaturated \emph{H}$^{1.90}$ dependence of MR up to 9.43~$\times$~$10^3$$\%$ at 10~K and 9~T was observed, which was explained by the existence of electron open orbits extending along the $k_{x}$ direction. Two mechanisms responsible for XMR observed usually in the semimetals occur also in the simple metal ReO$_3$ due to its peculiar FS (two closed electron pockets and one open electron pocket), once again indicating that the details of FS topology are a key factor for the observed XMR in materials.