Electronic structure of the heavy-fermion superconductor Ce2Ni3Ge5 and its reference Ce2Ni3Si5 compound by ab initio calculations

Abstract

Band structures of the pressure-induced, heavy-fermion superconductor Ce2Ni3Ge5 and its non-superconducting, mixed-valence isostructural (Ibam) counterpart Ce2Ni3Si5 have been calculated employing the full-potential local-orbital code. Both the local density approximation (LDA) and LDA+U approaches were applied. These investigations were focused particularly on the topology of the Fermi surfaces (FSs) of the compounds. The results show that the FSs are quite similar in these systems and exist in four bands, containing three-dimensional holelike and electronlike sheets. However, the specific FS nesting properties has been revealed only in Ce2Ni3Ge5. They support a previously postulated presence of antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations (SF) in the heavy-fermion superconducting state of this germanide under pressure. Such SF can be responsible for the pressure-induced unconventional superconductivity in this system.

8 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Incommensurate magnetic order in the alpha-Fe(Te,Se) superconductor systems
• Superconducting phase transition in YNiGe3, a non-f-electron reference to the unconventional superconductor CeNiGe3
• Electronic structure of superconducting Lu2Ni3Si5 and its reference compound Y2Ni3Si5 by ab initio calculations

Cited by in corpus (1)

• The electronic structure of CeNiGe3 and YNiGe3 superconductors by ab initio calculations