Pressure Induced Enhancement of Superconductivity in LaRu2P2

TL;DR

Applying pressure to LaRu2P2 significantly enhances its superconducting transition temperature, likely involving increased electronic correlations, indicating similarities with iron-based superconductors.

Contribution

This study demonstrates pressure-induced Tc enhancement in LaRu2P2 and suggests the role of electronic correlations beyond electron-phonon interactions.

Findings

Tc increased from 3.84K to 5.77K under 1.74 GPa pressure

Pressure influences electronic correlations in LaRu2P2

Superconductivity behavior resembles Fe-based superconductors

Abstract

To explore new superconductors beyond the copper-based and iron-based systems is very important. The Ru element locates just below the Fe in the periodic table and behaves like the Fe in many ways. One of the common thread to induce high temperature superconductivity is to introduce moderate correlation into the system. In this paper, we report the significant enhancement of superconducting transition temperature from 3.84K to 5.77K by using a pressure only of 1.74 GPa in LaRu2P2 which has an iso-structure of the iron-based 122 superconductors. The ab-initio calculation shows that the superconductivity in LaRu2P2 at ambient pressure can be explained by the McMillan's theory with strong electron-phonon coupling. However, it is difficult to interpret the significant enhancement of Tc versus pressure within this picture. Detailed analysis of the pressure induced evolution of resistivity and upper critical field Hc2(T) reveals that the increases of Tc with pressure may be accompanied by the involvement of extra electronic correlation effect. This suggests that the Ru-based system has some commonality as the Fe-based superconductors.