Superconductivity in lithium, potassium and aluminium under extreme pressure: A first-principles study

TL;DR

This study uses first-principles calculations to explore how extreme pressure influences superconductivity in elemental metals Li, K, and Al, revealing new insights and predictions consistent with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a parameter-free method to accurately predict superconducting properties under high pressure for simple metals, including untested predictions for potassium.

Findings

Pressure induces superconductivity in Li up to 17 K.

Superconductivity is suppressed in Al under pressure.

The method shows excellent agreement with experimental results.

Abstract

Extreme pressure strongly affects the superconducting properties of ``simple'' elemental metals, like Li, K and Al. Pressure induces superconductivity in Li (as high as 17 K), while suppressing it in Al. We report first-principles investigations of the superconducting properties of dense Li, K and Al based on a recently proposed, parameter-free, method. Our results show an unprecedented agreement with experiments, assess the predictive power of the method over a wide range of densities and electron-phonon couplings, and provide predictions for K, where no experiments exist so far. More importantly, our results help uncovering the physics of the different behaviors of Li and Al in terms of phonon softening and Fermi surface nesting in Li.