No Arabic abstract
Aiming at a unified treatment of correlation and inhomogeneity effects in superconductors, Oliveira, Gross and Kohn proposed in 1988 a density functional theory for the superconducting state. This theory relies on the existence of a Kohn-Sham scheme, i.e., an auxiliary noninteracting system with the same electron and anomalous densities of the original superconducting system. However, the question of noninteracting $v$-representability has never been properly addressed and the existence of the Kohn-Sham system has always been assumed without proof. Here, we show that indeed such a noninteracting system does not exist in at zero temperature. In spite of this result, we also show that the theory is still able to yield good results, although in the limit of weakly correlated systems only.
We present an textit{ab initio} theory for superconductors, based on a unique mapping between the statistical density operator at equilibrium, on the one hand, and the corresponding one-body reduced density matrix $gamma$ and the anomalous density $chi$, on the other. This new formalism for superconductivity yields the existence of a universal functional $mathfrak{F}_beta[gamma,chi]$ for the superconductor ground state, whose unique properties we derive. We then prove the existence of a Kohn-Sham system at finite temperature and derive the corresponding Bogoliubov-de Gennes-like single particle equations. By adapting the decoupling approximation from density functional theory for superconductors we bring these equations into a computationally feasible form. Finally, we use the existence of the Kohn-Sham system to extend the Sham-Schluter connection and derive a first exchange-correlation functional for our theory. This reduced density matrix functional theory for superconductors has the potential of overcoming some of the shortcomings and fundamental limitations of density functional theory of superconductivity.
The electronic structures of FeAs-compounds strongly depend on the Fe-As bonding, which can not be described successfully by the local density approximation (LDA). Treating the multi-orbital fluctuations from $ab$-$initio$ by LDA+Gutzwiller method, we are now able to predict the correct Fe-As bond-length, and find that Fe-As bonding-strength is 30% weaker, which will explain the observed soft phonon. The bands are narrowed by a factor of 2, and the $d_{3z^2-r^2}$ orbital is pushed up to cross the Fermi level, forming 3-dimensional Fermi surfaces, which suppress the anisotropy and the ($pi,pi$) nesting. The inter-orbital Hunds coupling $J$ rather than $U$ plays crucial roles to obtain these results.
We present a first-principles approach to describe magnetic and superconducting systems and the phenomena of competition between these electronic effects. We develop a density functional theory: SpinSCDFT, by extending the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem and constructing the non-interacting Kohn- Sham system. An exchange-correlation functional for SpinSCDFT is derived from the Sham Schluter connection between the SpinSCDFT Kohn-Sham and a self-energy in Eliashberg approximation. The reference Eliashberg equations for superconductors in the presence of magnetism are also derived and discussed.
A comprehensive angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy study of the band structure in single layer cuprates is presented with the aim of uncovering universal trends across different materials. Five different hole- and electron-doped cuprate superconductors (La$_{1.59}$Eu$_{0.2}$Sr$_{0.21}$CuO$_4$, La$_{1.77}$Sr$_{0.23}$CuO$_4$, Bi$_{1.74}$Pb$_{0.38}$Sr$_{1.88}$CuO$_{6+delta}$, Tl$_{2}$Ba$_{2}$CuO$_{6+delta}$, and Pr$_{1.15}$La$_{0.7}$Ce$_{0.15}$CuO$_{4}$) have been studied with special focus on the bands with predominately $d$-orbital character. Using light polarization analysis, the $e_g$ and $t_{2g}$ bands are identified across these materials. A clear correlation between the $d_{3z^2-r^2}$ band energy and the apical oxygen distance $d_mathrm{A}$ is demonstrated. Moreover, the compound dependence of the $d_{x^2-y^2}$ band bottom and the $t_{2g}$ band top is revealed. Direct comparison to density functional theory (DFT) calculations employing hybrid exchange-correlation functionals demonstrates excellent agreement. We thus conclude that the DFT methodology can be used to describe the global band structure of overdoped single layer cuprates on both the hole and electron doped side.
When a second-order magnetic phase transition is tuned to zero temperature by a non-thermal parameter, quantum fluctuations are critically enhanced, often leading to the emergence of unconventional superconductivity. In these `quantum critical superconductors it has been widely reported that the normal-state properties above the superconducting transition temperature $T_c$ often exhibit anomalous non-Fermi liquid behaviors and enhanced electron correlations. However, the effect of these strong critical fluctuations on the superconducting condensate below $T_c$ is less well established. Here we report measurements of the magnetic penetration depth in heavy-fermion, iron-pnictide, and organic superconductors located close to antiferromagnetic quantum critical points showing that the superfluid density in these nodal superconductors universally exhibit, unlike the expected $T$-linear dependence, an anomalous 3/2 power-law temperature dependence over a wide temperature range. We propose that this non-integer power-law can be explained if a strong renormalization of effective Fermi velocity due to quantum fluctuations occurs only for momenta $bm{k}$ close to the nodes in the superconducting energy gap $Delta(bm{k})$. We suggest that such `nodal criticality may have an impact on low-energy properties of quantum critical superconductors.