Cavity-enhanced superconductivity in MgB<sub>2</sub> from first-principles quantum electrodynamics (QEDFT).
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39636851.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1073/pnas.2415061121 and PMC identifier 11648876.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Strong laser pulses can control superconductivity, inducing nonequilibrium transient pairing by leveraging strong-light matter interaction. Here, we demonstrate theoretically that equilibrium ground-state phonon-mediated superconductive pairing can be affected through the vacuum fluctuating electromagnetic field in a cavity. Using the recently developed ab initio quantum electrodynamical density-functional theory approximation, we specifically investigate the phonon-mediated superconductive behavior of MgB[Formula: see text] under different cavity setups and find that in the strong light-matter coupling regime its superconducting transition temperature T[Formula: see text] can be enhanced at most by [Formula: see text]10% in an in-plane (or out-of-plane) polarized and realistic cavity via photon vacuum fluctuations. The results highlight that strong light-matter coupling in extended systems can profoundly alter material properties in a nonperturbative way by modifying their electronic structure and phononic dispersion at the same time. Our findings indicate a pathway to the experimental realization of light-controlled superconductivity in solid-state materials at equilibrium via cavity materials engineering.