Experimental uniaxial stress and strain derivatives of the Fermi surface of rhenium

Abstract

The derivatives of the areas of extremal orbits on all the small sheets of the Fermi surface of rhenium, with respect to stress and strain along the hexad axis, have been determined from simultaneous measurements of Landau quantum oscillations in magnetostriction and torque, and also in sound velocity and torque. Strong anisotropy is observed in the stress derivatives of orbits in zones five and six as the direction of the magnetic field defining the normal to the orbit is varied; the anisotropy is most pronounced for orbits which come close to the line of degeneracy AL on the hexagonal Brillouin zone face. The derivatives of the small void in zone eight are found to be very large; this is consistent with the results of band structure calculations which show that this feature of the Fermi surface is very sensitive to small changes in the Fermi energy. Cyclotron effective masses for a number of orbits on the void have also been measured.