Electron-phonon superconductivity in non-centrosymmetric LaNiC₂: first principles calculations

الأصل · EN

We report first principles calculations of the electronic structure and electron-phonon coupling in the non-centrosymmetric superconductor LaNiC₂. These show that the material is a conventional electron-phonon superconductor with intermediate coupling. There are large contributions to the coupling by two low frequency C non-bond-stretching modes, one of which has strong Kohn anomalies. Since LaNiC₂ lacks inversion symmetry, the pairing is of dominant s-wave type with some mixture of p-wave character. This will give exponential decay in the specific heat.