Numerical Study of Quantum Oscillations of the Quasiparticle Lifetime: Impurity Spectroscopy, Novel Electric Field and Strain Effects

TL;DR

This paper numerically investigates quantum oscillations of quasiparticle lifetime in metals, examining how impurities, electric fields, and strain influence these oscillations, which could serve as a new tool for probing scattering processes.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical analysis of quasiparticle lifetime oscillations, exploring effects of imperfections and identifying conditions that stabilize or enhance these oscillations.

Findings

Impurities and strain can stabilize or enhance non-Onsager QPLOs.

Numerical results confirm analytical predictions of QPLO phenomenology.

Imperfections influence the detectability and characteristics of QPLOs in experiments.

Abstract

Quantum oscillation (QOs) measurements constitute one of the most powerful methods for determining the Fermi surface (FS) of metals, exploiting the famous Onsager relation between the FS area and the QO frequency. The recent observation of non-Onsager QOs with a frequency set by the difference of two FS orbits in a bulk three-dimensional metal can be understood as the QO of the quasiparticle lifetime (QPL) due to interorbital scattering [Huber, Leeb, {\it et al.}, Nature 621 (2023)]. QPL oscillations (QPLOs) generalize magneto-intersubband oscillations (MISOs) known from coupled two-dimensional metals. They may provide a novel tool for extracting otherwise hard-to-measure intra-versus interband scattering times of quasiparticles. Here, we provide a numerical lattice study of QPLOs comparing transport and thermodynamic observables. We explore the effect of different imperfections like general impurities, Hall effect-induced electric fields, various forms of strain from bending, and magnetic field inhomogeneities. We confirm the basic phenomenology of QPLOs as predicted in analytical calculations and identify additional novel, non-perturbative features. Remarkably, we find that some imperfections can stabilize, or even enhance, non-Onsager QPLOs in contrast to standard QO frequencies. We discuss various avenues for identifying QPLOs in experiments and how to use their dependence on imperfections to extract material properties.