Landau diamagnetic response in metals as a Fermi surface effect

Abstract

It is demonstrated that the Landau diamagnetism of the free electron gas and a monovalent metal can be considered as a Fermi surface effect. Only relatively small number of electron states close to the Fermi surface are diamagnetically active whereas the majority of the electron states inside the Fermi surface are diamagnetically inert. This partitioning of the occupied electron states is driven by the structure of Landau levels, around which one can introduce magnetic tubes in the reciprocal space. Completely filled magnetic tubes do not change their energy in an applied magnetic field, and only partially occupied magnetic tubes in the neighborhood of the Fermi surface exhibit a diamagnetic response. Using this partitioning of the occupied electron states we derive a general expression for the steady diamagnetic susceptibility, for calculation of which one needs to know the shape of the Fermi surface and the energy gradient on it. The method is applied to alkali metals, whose Fermi surfaces and energy gradients have been obtained from ab initio band structure calculations. It has been found that the Landau diamagnetic susceptibility is anisotropic depending on the direction of the applied magnetic field in respect to the Fermi surface. This effect is more pronounced for Li and Cs, whose Fermi surfaces show a noticeable deformation from the spherical shape. The method opens a new route for ab initio calculations of the Landau diamagnetism of metals or intermetallic compounds. In the case of free electron gas it is shown that this approach also fully describes the oscillatory de Haas - van Alphen part of the diamagnetic susceptibility. Small oscillations of the Fermi energy found in the model are caused by redistribution (inflow or outflow) of electrons from the equatorial region of the Fermi surface.