Origin of extremely large non-saturating magnetoresistance in topological and trivial semimetals

Extremely large non-saturating magnetoresistance has recently been reported for a large number of both topologically trivial and non-trivial materials. Different mechanisms have been proposed to explain the observed magnetotransport properties, yet without arriving to definitive conclusions or portraying a global picture. We investigate the transverse magnetoresistance of materials by combining the Fermi surfaces calculated from first principles with the Boltzmann transport theory approach relying on the semiclassical model and the relaxation time approximation. We show that in all cases we investigated charge carrier compensation and open-orbit mechanisms are responsible for non-saturating magnetoresistance. We address in detail magnetotransport phenomena in some representative materials: copper, bismuth as well as in topological semiletals tungsten diphosphide WP₂[1] and zirconium silicon sulfide ZrSiS[2], finding excellent agreement with experimental results.

[1] S. N. Zhang et al., Phys. Rev. B 99, 035142 (2019)
[2] M. Novak et al., Phys. Rev. B 100, 085137 (2019)