Quantum Oscillations of Interlayer Conductivity in a Multilayer Topological Insulator

Quantum and difference oscillations of interlayer conductivity in a multilayer system of thin films of topological insulators (TIs) are investigated. Due to the linearity of the carrier spectrum in such a system, new features of quantum oscillations arise. In particular, the frequencies of de Haas–van Alfvén and Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations depend quadratically on the chemical potential, rather than linearly as in systems with parabolic carrier spectrum. For the same reason, the temperature damping factor of oscillations contains the chemical potential. This is due to the nonequidistant character of the Landau levels: the higher the chemical potential, the smaller the distance between Landau levels. However, the beat frequencies, as well as the frequencies of slow oscillations, do not depend on the chemical potential; in this sense, the behavior of these systems is similar to that of conventional non-Dirac systems. Finally, in the Born approximation (in the second order cross-diagram technique), we considered the general case when the interlayer conductivity takes into account both intra- and interband transitions. We have shown that the contribution of intraband transitions is insignificant for the conductivity oscillations in the absence of magnetic impurities. However, in the presence of a Dirac point in the spectrum, a linear (in magnetic field) intraband contribution to conductivity arises from the zero Landau level. At low temperatures, this contribution is exponentially small compared to the intraband contribution and vanishes at zero temperature.