Linear and quadratic magnetoresistance in the semimetal SiP2

Multiple mechanisms for extremely large magnetoresistance (XMR) found in many topologically nontrivial/trivial semimetals have been theoretically proposed, but experimentally it is unclear which mechanism is responsible in a particular sample. In this paper, by the combination of band structure calculations, numerical simulations of magnetoresistance (MR), Hall resistivity, and de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) oscillation measurements, we studied the MR anisotropy of SiP2 which is verified to be a topologically trivial, incomplete compensation semimetal. It was found that as magnetic field H is applied along the a-axis, the MR exhibits an unsaturated nearly linear H dependence, which was argued to arise from incomplete carriers compensation. For the H // [101] orientation, an unsaturated nearly quadratic H dependence of MR up to 5.88 × 10^4%(at 1.8 K, 31.2 T) and field-induced up-turn behavior in resistivity were observed, which was suggested due to the existence of hole open orbits extending along the kx direction. Good agreement of the experimental results with the simulations based on the calculated Fermi surface (FS) indicates that the topology of FS plays an important role in its MR.