Quantum oscillations in strongly correlated topological Kondo insulators

Abstract

The observation of quantum oscillations in topological Kondo insulators SmB6 and YbB12 is a recent puzzling experimental discovery. Quantum oscillations observed in the resistivity and the magnetization are usually explained by the existence of the Fermi surface. However, Kondo insulators do not have a Fermi surface and thus should not show quantum oscillations. By performing dynamical mean-field calculations for topologically nontrivial Kondo insulators in a magnetic field, we analyze the effect of correlations on the emergence of quantum oscillations in narrow-gap topological Kondo insulators and demonstrate that the interplay between correlations and nonlocal hybridization, ubiquitously occurring in topological Kondo insulators, can lead to observable quantum oscillations without the necessity of a Fermi surface. Particularly, we show that correlations make it easier to observe quantum oscillations in the magnetization and the resistivity of the bulk material. The fundamental mechanism for these quantum oscillations is a combination of correlation effects and Landau levels coming very close to the Fermi energy. We furthermore demonstrate that quantum oscillations in a three-dimensional system can be understood by analyzing the physics on the two-dimensional planes in the momentum space for which the hybridization in direction of the magnetic field vanishes. We believe that this scenario is relevant to understanding the observation of quantum oscillations in the magnetic torque for SmB6 as well as oscillations in the resistivity and the magnetic torque of YbB12.