English

An $ab\;initio$ answer to long-debated questions about superconducting Nb$_3$Sn

Superconductivity 2025-09-11 v2

Abstract

We present the first fully ab  initioab\;initio microscopic description of cubic and tetragonal Nb3_3Sn. We compute the anharmonic free energy surface, phonon spectra, and solve the full-bandwidth anisotropic Migdal-Eliashberg equations for the superconducting gap of the two phases. Our results show that anharmonic effects are crucial to stabilize both the cubic and tetragonal structures, yielding phonon spectra in excellent agreement with neutron scattering data. We find that the martensitic transition is weakly first-order and that the superconducting gap is strongly anisotropic yet fully-open, with contributions from both longitudinal and transverse Nb dd-orbitals, revealing an unexpected three-dimensional pairing mechanism. We also find that the experimentally observed reduction of the upper critical field Hc2H_{c2} across the transition is explained by a combination of overall weaker electron-phonon coupling and a redistribution of Fermi velocities, which shifts parts of the Fermi surface to longer coherence lengths and limits Hc2H_{c2}. Based on these insights, we propose that Sn-site doping could enhance transverse-state coupling and gap isotropy, potentially improving both TcT_c and Hc2H_{c2}, while Nb-site doping reinforce Hc2H_{c2} at the cost of lowering TcT_c.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.07307,
  title  = {An $ab\;initio$ answer to long-debated questions about superconducting Nb$_3$Sn},
  author = {Alessio Cucciari and Lilia Boeri},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.07307},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

11 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, supplemental material (15 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables)