Fermi surface of LaAg

Abstract

Electronic structure, especially the Fermi surface, is calculated for the intermetallic rare-earth compound LaAg, known to show the structural phase transition when In is substituted for Ag, by a self-consistent fully-relativistic APW method with the exchange-correlation potential in a local-density approximation. The Fermi surface is found to consist of large hole and electron sheets as well as small hole and electron sheets. This result confirms well the theoretical prediction by Niksch et al. (1987). These Fermi surface sheets are found to explain the experimental results for the de Haas-van Alphen effect by Niksch et al. (1987) and Motoki et al. (1995) reasonably well. But, the frequency branches originating from the large hole sheet have been observed only partially. Local curvature of the large hole sheet is investigated as a possible origin of the disappearance of these frequency branches.