A rigorous proof of the Landau-Peierls formula and much more (Q421119)

The authors present a rigorous mathematical treatment of the zero-field orbital magnetic susceptibility of a non-interacting Bloch electron gas, at fixed temperature and density, for both metals and semiconductors/insulators. After giving rigorous results about the Fermi energy for semiconductors, insulators, semimetals and metals, the authors present a formula for the (grand canonical) susceptibility as functions of the inverse temperature, the fugacity and the cyclotron frequency, obtained by means of the so-called `gauge invariant magnetic perturbation theory'. At zero magnetic field and fixed density, they manage to express this formula in terms of the Bloch energy functions and their associated eigenfunctions, by using the Bloch decomposition and the residue calculus. This allows them to obtain the main result of the paper, that is the orbital susceptibility of a Bloch electron gas at fixed density and zero temperature. In particular, they retreive the Landau-Peierls formula in the low temperature and density limit as conjectured by \textit{T. Kjeldaas} and \textit{W. Kohn} [Phys. Rev., II. Ser. 105, 806--813 (1957; Zbl 0077.23904)].