Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Structure and superconductivity in alkali tungsten bronzes

Journal Article · · Phys. Rev., B: Condens. Matter; (United States)

The anomalous concentration dependence of the superconducting transition temperature of alkali tungsten bronzes M/sub x/WO/sub 3/ is shown to be consistent with electron pairing induced by exchange of acoustic plasmons. Structural changes in these metals yield significant band-structure splitting which is shown to be essential to the formation of well-defined acoustic-plasmon branches in the dielectric function. Our results explain why cubic H/sub x/MO/sub 3/ is not superconducting even for large metallic densities x ..-->.. 1, and furthermore, demonstrate that the hexagonal phase is favorable to superconducting pairing in agreement with experiments on Rb/sub x/WO/sub 3/ and Cs/sub x/WO/sub 3/. Possible neutron and Brillouin scattering experiments are proposed to directly measure the acoustic-plasmon dispersion and damping.

Research Organization:
Physics Department, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22901
OSTI ID:
6260450
Journal Information:
Phys. Rev., B: Condens. Matter; (United States), Journal Name: Phys. Rev., B: Condens. Matter; (United States) Vol. 19:11; ISSN PRBMD
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English