The Shubnikov–de Haas effect in quasi-two-dimensional normal metals is studied. The interlayer conductivity is calculated using the Kubo formula. The electron scattering on short-range impurities is considered in the self-consistent Born approximation. The result obtained is given in the analytical form, that allows an easy comparison with experimental data. It differs from the result derived using the Boltzmann transport equation. This difference is shown to be a general feature of conductivity in magnetic field. A detailed description of the field-dependent phase shift of beats and of the slow oscillations of conductivity is provided. The obtained results are applicable to strongly anisotropic organic metals and to other quasi-two-dimensional compounds.

Slow oscillations of the interlayer magnetoresistance observed in the layered organic metal $\beta \mathrm{\text{−}}(\mathrm{B}\mathrm{E}\mathrm{D}\mathrm{T}\mathrm{\text{−}}\mathrm{T}\mathrm{T}\mathrm{F}{)}_2{\mathrm{I}\mathrm{B}\mathrm{r}}_2$ are shown to originate from the slight warping of its Fermi surface rather than from independent small cyclotron orbits. Unlike the usual Shubnikov–de Haas effect, these oscillations are not affected by the temperature smearing of the Fermi distribution and can therefore become dominant at high enough temperatures. We suggest that the slow oscillations are a general feature of clean quasi-two-dimensional metals and discuss possible applications of the phenomenon.

We report measurements of the magnetoresistance in the charge density wave (CDW) state of rare-earth tritellurides, namely ${\mathrm{TbTe}}_3$ and ${\mathrm{HoTe}}_3$. The magnetic field dependence of magnetoresistance exhibits a temperature dependent crossover between a conventional quadratic law at high $T$ and low $B$ and an unusual linear dependence at low $T$ and high $B$. We present a quite general model to explain the linear magnetoresistance taking into account the strong scattering of quasiparticles on CDW fluctuations in the vicinity of “hot spots” of the Fermi surface (FS) where the FS reconstruction is the strongest.

We show that the isotropic conductivity in the normal state of rare-earth tritelluride $R{\mathrm{Te}}_{3}$ compounds is broken by the occurrence of the unidirectional charge density wave (CDW) in the ($a$, $c$) plane below the Peierls transition temperature. In contrast with quasi-one-dimensional systems, the resistivity anomaly associated with the CDW transition is strong in the direction perpendicular to the CDW wave vector $\mathbf{Q}$ ($a$ axis) and very weak in the CDW wave vector $\mathbf{Q}$ direction ($c$ axis). We qualitatively explain this result by calculating the electrical conductivity for the electron dispersion with momentum-dependent CDW gap as determined by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Similar measurements of in-plane conductivity may uncover the gap anisotropy in other compounds for which angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy is not available.

The de Haas-van Alphen effect in quasi-two-dimensional metals is studied at arbitrary parameters. Oscillations of the chemical potential can substantially change the temperature dependence of harmonic amplitudes that is commonly used to determine the effective electron mass. The processing of the experimental data using the standard Lifshitz-Kosevich formula can therefore lead to substantial errors even in the strong harmonic damping limit. This can explain the difference between the effective electron masses determined from the de Haas-van Alphen effect and the cyclotron resonance measurements. The oscillations of the chemical potential and the deviations from the Lifshitz-Kosevich formula depend on the reservoir density of states that exists in organic metals due to open sheets of the Fermi surface. This dependence can be used to determine the density of electron states on open sheets of the Fermi surface. We present analytical results of the calculations of harmonic amplitudes in some limiting cases that show the importance of the chemical potential oscillations. We also describe a simple algorithm for a numerical calculation of the harmonic amplitudes for arbitrary reservoir density of states, arbitrary warping, spin-splitting, temperature, and Dingle temperature.

A superposition of the Pauli and orbital couplings of a high magnetic field to charge carriers in a charge-density-wave (CDW) system is proposed to give rise to transitions between subphases with quantized values of the CDW wave vector. By contrast to the purely orbital field-induced density-wave effects which require a strongly imperfect nesting of the Fermi surface, the new transitions can occur even if the Fermi surface is well nested at zero field. We suggest that such transitions are observed in the organic metal $\alpha -(\mathrm{BEDT}-\mathrm{TTF}{)}_2\mathrm{KHg}(\mathrm{SCN}{)}_4$ under a strongly tilted magnetic field.