Revisiting the homogeneous electron gas in pursuit of the properly normed ab initio Eliashberg theory

Abstract

We address an issue of how to accurately include the self energy effect of the screened electron-electron Coulomb interaction in the phonon-mediated superconductors from first principles. In the Eliashberg theory for superconductors, self energy is usually decomposed using the $2\times 2$ Pauli matrices in the electron-hole space. We examine how the diagonal (${\sigma }_0$ and ${\sigma }_3$) components resulting in the quasiparticle correction to the normal state, $Z$ and $\chi$ terms, behave in the homogeneous electron gas in order to establish a norm of treating those components in real metallic systems. Within the $G_0{W}_0$ approximation, we point out that these components are non-analytic near the Fermi surface but their directional derivatives and resulting corrections to the quasiparticle velocity are nevertheless well defined. Combined calculations using the $G_0{W}_0$ approximation and Eliashberg equations show us that the effective mass and pairing strength strikingly depend on both $Z$ and $\chi$, in a different manner. The calculations without the numerically demanding $\chi$ term is thus shown to be incapable of describing the homogeneous electron gas limit. This result poses a challenge to accurate first-principles Eliashberg theory.

12 pages, 4 figures. Ver. 2: Sec. II B added, abstract and conclusions updated; accepted

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