Giant anharmonicity suppresses superconductivity in AlH$_3$ under pressure

Abstract

The anharmonic self energy of two zone boundary phonons were computed to lowest order for AlH$_3$ in the $Pm\bar 3n$ structure at 110 GPa. The wavevector and branch index corresponding to these modes are situated in a region of phase space providing most of the electron-phonon coupling. The self energies are found to be very large and the anharmonic contribution to the linewidth of one of the modes studied could be distinguished from the electron-phonon linewidth. It is found that anharmonicity suppresses the electron-phonon coupling parameter $λ$, providing a possible explanation for the disagreement between experiment and previous theoretical studies of superconductivity in this system.

10 pages, 4 figures