Reply to "Comment on 'Origin of combination frequencies in quantum magnetic oscillations of two-dimensional multiband metals' " by A.S. Alexandrov and A.M. Bratkovsky [cond-mat/0207173]

In their comment on the paper (Phys. Rev. B 65, 153403 (2002); cond-mat/0110154), Alexandrov and Bratkovsky (cond-mat/0207173) argue that they correctly took into account the chemical potential oscillations in their analytical theory of combination frequencies in multiband low-dimensional metals by expanding the free energy in powers of the chemical potential oscillations. In this reply, we show that this claim contradicts their original paper (Phys. Rev. B 63, 033105 (2001)). We demonstrate that the condition given for the expansion is mathematically incorrect. The correct condition allows to understand the limits of validity of the analytical theory.