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An ab-initio framework for discovering high-temperature superconductors

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Abstract

The role of the dielectric function in superconductivity has been extensively discussed. It has been suggested that negative values of the dielectric function can serve as a mechanism of superconductivity, and that the critical temperature \(T_\mathrm{c}\) can be directly expressed in terms of the dielectric function. We survey the possibility of implementing this theory using ab-initio density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) codes. Success will allow the prediction and study of novel superconductors to be performed efficiently on computers, revolutionizing the search for room-temperature superconductivity. Bulk aluminum is studied to test and illustrate the various components of the implementation, and to compare with previous predictions. We show the first ab-initio computation of the dielectric function of bulk aluminum, which matches to very high accuracy with experiment. However, we also see that for full implementation of the proposed methodology, further work is required, which we believe is within reach. In the spirit of engineering new materials with these tools, we also explore decorated carbon nanotubes as potential realizations of Little’s model.

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Notes

  1. In Eqs. (13) and (14) we have used the used signs opposite to those that appear in the foundational article by Botti et al. [3]. It appears that this reversed sign convention is used in DP input files (where \({\alpha }\) must be specified), so we have decided to remain consistent with DP. The resulting kernel is the same, so this is truly a matter of convention.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Armen Gulian for initiating, guiding, and supporting this work for many years. We are grateful to all the organizers and supporters of the 2nd Annual International Workshop, Towards Room Temperature Superconductivity: Superhydrides and more (Chapman University, Orange CA, May 8–9, 2017). We presented our results at this workshop and received very helpful feedback. In particular, we thank Paul Grant, whose talk on the KMK formulas was very influential and resulted in our plans to implement them as part of the program described in this article. Finally, we thank Valerio Olevano for communicating with us and answering our questions about the DP code and methodology. This research was supported in part by the ONR Grants N000141210768 and N000141210244.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, Brown University, 151 Thayer Street, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Mamikon Gulian

  2. GMLab, and Affiliated Researcher at Chapman University, GMLab, 873 Rue Jean-Noel, Quebec, QC, G1X 2N3, Canada

    Gurgen Melkonyan

  3. Department of Physics, Chapman University, 346 N Center St, Orange, CA, 92866, USA

    Sakthisundar Kasthurirengan

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  1. Mamikon Gulian
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  2. Gurgen Melkonyan
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  3. Sakthisundar Kasthurirengan
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Correspondence to Mamikon Gulian.

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Gulian, M., Melkonyan, G. & Kasthurirengan, S. An ab-initio framework for discovering high-temperature superconductors. Quantum Stud.: Math. Found. 5, 89–101 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40509-017-0125-y

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