English

Underlying topological Dirac nodal line mechanism of anomalously large electron-phonon coupling strength on Be (0001) surface

Materials Science 2019-10-02 v1

Abstract

Beryllium was recently discovered to harbor a Dirac nodal line (DNL) in its bulk phase and the DNL-induced non-trivial drumhead-like surface states (DNSSs) on its (0001) surface, rationalizing several already-existing historic puzzles [Phys. Rev. Lett., \textbf{117}, 096401 (2016)]. However, to date the underlying mechanism, as to why its (0001) surface exhibits an anomalously large electron-phonon coupling effect (λephs\lambda_{e-ph}^s \approx 1.0), remains unresolved. Here, by means of first-principles calculations we have evidenced that the coupling of the DNSSs with the phononic states mainly contributes to its novel surface \emph{e-ph} enhancement. Besides that the experimentally observed λephs\lambda_{e-ph}^s and the main Eliashberg coupling function (ECF) peaks have been reproduced well, we have decomposed the ECF, α2\alpha^{2}FF(\emph{k},\textbf{\emph{q}};\emph{v}), and the \emph{e-ph} coupling strength λ(k,q;v)\lambda(\emph{k},\textbf{\emph{q}};\emph{v}) as a function of each electron momentum (\emph{k}), each phonon momentum (\textbf{\emph{q}}) and each phonon mode (vv), evidencing the robust connection between the DNSSs and both α2\alpha^{2}FF(\emph{k},\textbf{\emph{q}};\emph{v}) and λ(k,q;v)\lambda(\emph{k},\textbf{\emph{q}};\emph{v}). The results reveal the strong \emph{e-ph} coupling between the DNSSs and the phonon modes, which contributes over 80%\% of the λephs\lambda_{e-ph}^s coefficient on the Be (0001) surface. It highlights that the anomalously large \emph{e-ph} coefficient on the Be (0001) surface can be attributed to the presence of its DNL-induced DNSSs, clarifying the long-term debated mechanism.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1907.08554,
  title  = {Underlying topological Dirac nodal line mechanism of anomalously large electron-phonon coupling strength on Be (0001) surface},
  author = {Ronghan Li and Jiangxu Li and Lei Wang and Hui Ma and Dianzhong Li and Yiyi Li and Xing-Qiu Chen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.08554},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures