gfactor of conduction electrons in the de Haas–van Alphen effect

Although formulas for the semiclassical electron g factor in the de Haas--van Alphen effect were first derived by Roth in 1966, they are sufficiently complicated and have not been used in practice so far. In this paper we represent the formulas in a more convenient form which also admits a simple physical interpretation. It follows from these formulas that numerous computations of the g factor performed earlier did not take into account the spin dynamics of a semiclassical Bloch electron moving in a magnetic field. This can lead to inaccurate results for the g factor if the spin-orbit interaction in the crystal under study is not small. We also point out that the concept of local g factors widely used in the computations has a limited field of application and is not generally correct for a strong spin-orbit coupling. Finally, we calculate and analyze the g factor for a three-band model of the electron spectrum which was previously used in describing the so-called needles in zinc.