Necessary and sufficient condition for longitudinal magnetoresistance

Since the Lorentz force is perpendicular to the magnetic field, it should not affect the motion of a charge along the field. This argument seems to imply absence of longitudinal magnetoresistance (LMR) which is, however, observed in many materials and reproduced by standard semiclassical transport theory applied to particular metals. We derive a necessary and sufficient condition on the shape of the Fermi surface for nonzero LMR. Although an anisotropic spectrum is a prerequisite for LMR, not all types of anisotropy can give rise to the effect: a spectrum should not be separable in any sense. More precisely, the combination $k_{\rho }{v}_{\varphi }/v_{\rho }$, where $k_{\rho }$ is the radial component of the momentum in a cylindrical system with the $z$ axis along the magnetic field and $v_{\rho }\left(v_{\varphi }\right)$ is the radial (tangential) component of the velocity, should depend on the momentum along the field. For some lattice types, this condition is satisfied already at the level of nearest-neighbor hopping; for others, the required non-separabality occurs only if next-to-nearest-neighbor hopping is taken into account.

Figure 1

(Color online) Geometric interpretation of the necessary condition for longitudinal magnetoresistance. Here, ${\mathbf{v}}_{\perp }$ is the component of the electron velocity perpendicular to the field.

Figure 2

Calculated dependence of LMR on magnetic field in graphite.