A superposition of the Pauli and orbital couplings of a high magnetic field to charge carriers in a charge-density-wave (CDW) system is proposed to give rise to transitions between subphases with quantized values of the CDW wave vector. By contrast to the purely orbital field-induced density-wave effects which require a strongly imperfect nesting of the Fermi surface, the new transitions can occur even if the Fermi surface is well nested at zero field. We suggest that such transitions are observed in the organic metal $\alpha -(\mathrm{BEDT}-\mathrm{TTF}{)}_2\mathrm{KHg}(\mathrm{SCN}{)}_4$ under a strongly tilted magnetic field.

• Received 8 September 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.68.201101