Fermi surface of YAl2

Abstract
The energy bandstructure for the cubic Laves-phase intermetallic compound YAl2, which has recently attracted interest as a proper reference material for the study of anomalous physical properties of rare-earth dialuminides, is calculated self-consistently by a non-relativistic APW method with the Kohn-Sham exchange potential. The Fermi surface consists of various sheets, for which the extremal cross section and the cyclotron mass is carefully calculated. The eighth-band Fermi surface consists of small hole pockets around the Delta axes. The ninth-band Fermi surface is a multiply connected hole sheet, the topology of which is a junglegym running from an X point to a nearest-neighbour X point. Open orbits exist in (100) directions. The tenth-band Fermi surface is an electron sphere centred at the Gamma point, but has bumps in (100) directions. The calculated extremal cross sectional area of the tenth-band Fermi surface agrees within 10% with an experimental result of the recent de Haas-van Alphen effect measurement.

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