Description

In the second half of the last century, numerous experiments detected Sondheimer oscillations in ballistic elemental metals. In this case, electric conductivity in the plane perpendicular to the magnetic field oscillates periodically as a function of magnetic field (and not the inverse of magnetic field as in the case of Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations). Sondheimer oscillations are classified as a semi-classical phenomenon. But according to our recent findings, this is not true. In cadmium crystals, we found an empirical scaling for the amplitude of the oscillations across a forty-fold variation of thickness. It is set by the quantum of conductance, the magnetic length, and the geometry of the Fermi surface. We aim to explore other elemental metals provide input for a quantum theory of Sondheimer oscillations.

Skills required

Motivated, curious, familiar with the basic notions of condensed matter physics and a taste for challenging experiments

Bibliography

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ypwZpUQAAAAJ&hl=fr
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=fr&user=vFVZm28AAAAJ
https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.11586
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-033117-054021

Keywords

transport, quntum confinement, Landau quantization