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Landau Level Quantization and Almost Flat Modes in Three-dimensional Semi-metals with Nodal Ring Spectra

We investigate novel Landau level structures of semi-metals with nodal ring dispersions. When the magnetic field is applied parallel to the plane in which the ring lies, there exist almost non-dispersive Landau levels at the Fermi level (E_F = 0) as a function of the momentum along the field direction inside the ring. We show that the Landau levels at each momentum along the field direction can be described by the Hamiltonian for the graphene bilayer with fictitious inter-layer couplings under a tilted magnetic field. Near the center of the ring where the inter-layer coupling is negligible, we have Dirac Landau levels which explain the appearance of the zero modes. Although the inter-layer hopping amplitudes become finite at higher momenta, the splitting of zero modes is exponentially small and they remain almost flat due to the finite artificial in-plane component of the magnetic field. The emergence of the density of states peak at the Fermi level would be a hallmark of the ring dispersion.