Origin of the turn-on temperature behavior in WTe$_2$

A hallmark of materials with extremely large magnetoresistance (XMR) is the transformative 'turn-on' temperature behavior: when the applied magnetic field $H$ is above certain value, the resistivity versus temperature $ρ(T)$ curve shows a minimum at a field dependent temperature $T^*$, which has been interpreted as a magnetic-field-driven metal-insulator transition or attributed to an electronic structure change. Here, we demonstrate that $ρ(T)$ curves with turn-on behavior in the newly discovered XMR material WTe$_2$ can be scaled as MR $\sim(H/ρ_0)^m$ with $m\approx 2$ and $ρ_0$ being the resistivity at zero-field. We obtained experimentally and also derived from the observed scaling the magnetic field dependence of the turn-on temperature $T^* \sim (H-H_c)^ν$ with $ν\approx 1/2$, which was earlier used as evidence for a predicted metal-insulator transition. The scaling also leads to a simple quantitative expression for the resistivity $ρ^* \approx 2 ρ_0$ at the onset of the XMR behavior, which fits the data remarkably well. These results exclude the possible existence of a magnetic-field-driven metal-insulator transition or significant contribution of an electronic structure change to the low-temperature XMR in WTe$_2$. This work resolves the origin of the turn-on behavior observed in several XMR materials and also provides a general route for a quantitative understanding of the temperature dependence of MR in both XMR and non-XMR materials.

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