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Random walks and magnetic oscillations in compensated metals

The field- and temperature-dependent de Haas-van Alphen oscillations spectrum is studied for an ideal two-dimensional compensated metal whose Fermi surface is made of a linear chain of successive orbits with electron and hole character, coupled by magnetic breakdown. We show that the first harmonics amplitude can be accurately evaluated on the basis of the Lifshits-Kosevich (LK) formula by considering a set of random walks on the orbit network, in agreement with the numerical resolution of semi-classical equations. Oppositely, the second harmonics amplitude does not follow the LK behavior and vanishes at a critical value of the field-to-temperature ratio which depends explicitly on the relative value between the hole and electron effective masses.