High Temperature Superconductivity in the Candidate Phases of Solid Hydrogen

TL;DR

This study investigates the superconducting properties of various candidate phases of solid hydrogen under high pressure, revealing phase-dependent transition temperatures that can guide future experimental identification of these phases.

Contribution

It provides detailed calculations of superconducting transition temperatures for multiple hydrogen phases, including anharmonic effects, enhancing understanding of hydrogen's phase diagram.

Findings

Cmca-12 phase Tc rises from 86 K to 212 K between 400-500 GPa

Cmca-4 phase Tc ranges from 74 K to 94 K

I41/amd-2 phase Tc ranges from 307 K to 343 K

Abstract

As the simplest element in nature, unraveling the phase diagram of hydrogen is a primary task for condensed matter physics. As conjectured many decades ago, in the low-temperature and high-pressure part of the phase diagram, solid hydrogen is expected to become metallic with a high superconducting transition temperature. The metallization may occur via band gap closure in the molecular solid or via a transition to the atomic solid. Recently, a few experimental studies pushed the achievable pressures into the 400 - 500 GPa range. There are strong indications that at some pressure in this range metallization via either of these mechanisms occurs, although there are disagreements between experimental reports. Furthermore, there are multiple good candidate crystal phases that have emerged from recent computational and experimental studies which may be realized in upcoming experiments. Therefore, it is crucial to determine the superconducting properties of these candidate phases. In a recent study, we reported the superconducting properties of the C2/c-24 phase, which we believe to be a strong candidate for metallization via band gap closure [M. Dogan et al., arXiv:2107.03889 (2021)]. Here, we report the superconducting properties of the Cmca-12, Cmca-4 and I41/amd-2 phases including the anharmonic effects using a Wannier function-based dense k-point and q-point sampling. We find that the Cmca-12 phase has a superconducting transition temperature that rises from 86 K at 400 GPa to 212 K at 500 GPa, whereas the Cmca-4 and I41/amd-2 phases show a less pressure-dependent behavior with their Tc in the 74 - 94 K and 307 - 343 K ranges, respectively. These properties can be used to distinguish between crystal phases in future experiments. Understanding superconductivity in pure hydrogen is also important in the study of high-Tc hydrides.