Local and non-local electron-phonon couplings in K3Picene and the effect of metallic screening

TL;DR

This study investigates electron-phonon interactions in K3Picene, revealing that non-local couplings dominate and molecular calculations underestimate total coupling due to metallic screening effects.

Contribution

The paper introduces a detailed analysis separating local and non-local electron-phonon couplings in K3Picene, highlighting the dominance of non-local interactions and the impact of metallic screening.

Findings

Purely molecular contributions account for only 20% of total lambda.

Metallic screening reduces Holstein-like couplings by a factor of four.

Non-local couplings due to phonon modulated hoppings constitute 80% of lambda.

Abstract

We analyze the properties of electron-phonon couplings in K3Picene by exploiting a molecular orbital representation derived in the maximally localized Wannier function formalism. This allows us to go beyond the analysis done in Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 137006 (2011), and separate not only the intra- and intermolecular phonon contributions but also the local and non-local electronic states in the electron-phonon matrix elements. Despite the molecular nature of the crystal, we find that the purely molecular contributions (Holstein-like couplings where the local deformation potential is coupled to intramolecular phonons) account for only 20% of the total electron-phonon interaction lambda. In particular, the Holstein-like contributions to lambda in K3Picene are four times smaller than those computed for an isolated neutral molecule, as they are strongly screened by the metallic bands of the doped crystal. Our findings invalidate the use of molecular electron-phonon calculations to estimate the total electron-phonon coupling in metallic picene, and possibly in other doped metallic molecular crystals. The major contribution (80%) to lambda in K3Picene comes from non-local couplings due to phonon modulated hoppings. We show that the crystal geometry together with the molecular picene structure leads to a strong 1D spatial anisotropy of the non-local couplings. Finally, based on the parameters derived from our density functional theory calculations, we propose a lattice modelization of the electron-phonon couplings in K3Picene which gives 90% of ab-initio lambda.