Evidence of strong electron-phonon interaction in superconducting MgB$_2$ from electron tunneling

Abstract

We report tunneling measurements of the electron-phonon (e-ph) interaction in superconducting MgB$_2$ using the MgB$_2$-I-Nb junctions, where I stands for insulator. The phonon structure in tunneling density of states in MgB$_2$ clearly indicates strong e-ph coupling for the E$_{2g}$ in-plane boron phonons in a narrow range around 60 meV. The Eliashberg spectral function $α^2(ω)F(ω)$ reconstructed from the tunneling data, exhibits significant additional contribution into e-ph interaction from other vibrations such as acoustic ($\sim 38$ meV) and optical ($\sim 90$ meV) bands. Our results are in reasonable agreement with neutron scattering experiments, and also to some data of Raman and infrared spectroscopy.

Submitted to PRL