Sensitivity of the interlayer magnetoresistance of layered metals to intralayer anisotropies

Abstract

Many of the most interesting and technologically important electronic materials discovered in the past two decades have two common features: a layered crystal structure and strong interactions between electrons. Two of the most fundamental questions about such layered metals concern the origin of intralayer anisotropies and the coherence of interlayer charge transport. We show that angle dependent magnetoresistance oscillations (AMRO) are sensitive to anisotropies around an intralayer Fermi surface. Hence, AMRO can be a probe of intralayer anisotropies that is complementary to angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). However, AMRO are not very sensitive to the coherence of the interlayer transport. We illustrate this with comparisons to recent AMRO experiments on an overdoped cuprate.