Aharonov-Bohm magnetism and Landau diamagnetism in semimetals

Abstract

We compute the magnetic response of hollow semimetal cylinders and rings to the presence of an axial Aharonov-Bohm magnetic flux, in the absence of interactions. We predict nullification of the Aharonov-Bohm effect for a class of dispersion laws that includes "non-relativistic" dispersion and demonstrate that at zero flux the ground-state of a very short "armchair" graphene tube will exhibit a ferromagnetic broken symmetry. We also compute the diamagnetic response of bulk semimetals to the presence of a uniform magnetic field, specifically predicting that the susceptibility has a logarithmic dependence on the size of the sample.

5 pages, version to be published in Physica Scripta