Unified understanding of superconductivity and Mott transition in alkali-doped fullerides from first principles

Sci Adv. 2015 Aug 21;1(7):e1500568. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1500568. eCollection 2015 Aug.

Abstract

Alkali-doped fullerides A 3C60 (A = K, Rb, Cs) are surprising materials where conventional phonon-mediated superconductivity and unconventional Mott physics meet, leading to a remarkable phase diagram as a function of volume per C60 molecule. We address these materials with a state-of-the-art calculation, where we construct a realistic low-energy model from first principles without using a priori information other than the crystal structure and solve it with an accurate many-body theory. Remarkably, our scheme comprehensively reproduces the experimental phase diagram including the low-spin Mott-insulating phase next to the superconducting phase. More remarkably, the critical temperatures T c's calculated from first principles quantitatively reproduce the experimental values. The driving force behind the surprising phase diagram of A 3C60 is a subtle competition between Hund's coupling and Jahn-Teller phonons, which leads to an effectively inverted Hund's coupling. Our results establish that the fullerides are the first members of a novel class of molecular superconductors in which the multiorbital electronic correlations and phonons cooperate to reach high T c s-wave superconductivity.

Keywords: Dynamical Mean-Field Theory; Mott Transition; Strongly correlated materials; alkali-doped fullerides; density-functional theory; downfolding; electron-phonon interactions; first principles; unconventional superconductivity.