The influence of spin orbit interaction on phonons and superconductivity in the noncentrosymmetric superconductors LaPt<inf>3</inf>Si and LaPtSi<inf>3</inf>

Abstract

We have performed ab initio study of structural, electronic, vibrational and electron-phonon interaction properties of LaPt3 Si and LaPtSi3 by employing the density functional theory, a linear-response formalism, and the plane-wave pseudopotential method. The electronic structure, phonon dispersion relations and the Eliashberg spectral function for these materials have been examined with and without the inclusion of spin-orbit interaction (SOI). Our electron-phonon interaction results reveal that the influence of spin-orbit interaction on phonons and superconductivity in these noncentrosymmetric superconductors is very small. Thus, we can conclude that a mixing of the spin-singlet and the spin-triplet components in these superconductors is weak and the spin-singlet Cooper pairs dominate. By integrating the Eliashberg spectral function α2F(ω), the average electron-phonon coupling parameter λ is obtained to be 0.470 for LaPt3 Si and 0.488 for LaPtSi3, indicating these to be weak-coupling BCS superconductors. Using an acceptable value of μ∗ = 0.13 for the effective Coulomb repulsion parameter, the superconducting critical temperature Tc is calculated to be 0.67 K for LaPt3 Si and 1.39 K for LaPtSi3, in good accordance with experimental values of 0.65 K and 1.52 K, respectively.