High-temperature magneto-inter-chirality oscillations in 2D systems with strong spin-orbit coupling

Abstract

Conventional magneto-oscillations of conductivity in three dimensions are washed out as the temperature exceeds the spacing between the Landau levels. This is due to smearing of the Fermi distribution. In two dimensions, in the presence of two or more size-quantization sub-bands, there is an additional type of magneto-oscillations, usually referred to as magneto-inter-sub-band oscillations, which do not decay exponentially with temperature. The period of these oscillations is determined by the condition that the energy separation between the sub-bands contains an integer number of Landau levels. Under this condition, which does not contain the Fermi distribution, the inter-sub-band scattering rate is maximal. Here we show that, with only one sub-band, high-temperature oscillations are still possible. They develop when the electron spectrum is split due to the spin-orbit coupling. For these additional oscillations, the coupling enters both, the period and the decay rate.