Rational material design of mixed-valent high Tc_c superconductors

We design, from first principles calculations, a novel family of thallium halide-based compounds as candidates for new high temperature superconductors, whose superconductivity is mediated by the recently proposed mechanism of non-local correlation-enhanced strong electron-phonon coupling. Two prototype compounds namely CsTlF$_3$ and CsTlCl$_3$ are studied with various hole doping levels and volumes. The critical superconducting temperature T$_c$ are predicted to be about 30 K and 20 K with $\sim$0.35/f.u. hole doping and require only modest pressures ($\sim$10 and $\sim$2 GPa), respectively. Our procedure of designing this class of superconductors is quite general and can be used to search for other "other high temperature superconductors".Comment: 6- ages, EPL 101, 27002 (2013

Correlation-enhanced electron-phonon coupling: Applications of GW and screened hybrid functional to bismuthates, chloronitrides, and other high Tc superconductors

We show that the electron-phonon coupling (EPC) in many materials can be significantly underestimated by the standard density functional theory (DFT) in the local density approximation (LDA) due to large non-local correlation effects. We present a simple yet efficient methodology to evaluate the realistic EPC going beyond LDA by using more advanced and accurate GW and screened hybrid functional DFT approaches. The corrections we propose explain the extraordinarily high superconducting temperatures that are observed in two distinct classes of compounds-the bismuthates and the transition metal chloronitrides, thus solving a thirty-year-old puzzle. Our work calls for the critically reevaluation of the EPC of certain phonon modes in many other materials such as cuprates and iron-based superconductors. The proposed methodology can be used to design new correlation-enhanced high temperature superconductors and other functional materials involving electron-phonon interaction.Comment: Substantilly extended version of the previous manuscript, 19 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Almost Sure Stabilization for Adaptive Controls of Regime-switching LQ Systems with A Hidden Markov Chain

This work is devoted to the almost sure stabilization of adaptive control systems that involve an unknown Markov chain. The control system displays continuous dynamics represented by differential equations and discrete events given by a hidden Markov chain. Different from previous work on stabilization of adaptive controlled systems with a hidden Markov chain, where average criteria were considered, this work focuses on the almost sure stabilization or sample path stabilization of the underlying processes. Under simple conditions, it is shown that as long as the feedback controls have linear growth in the continuous component, the resulting process is regular. Moreover, by appropriate choice of the Lyapunov functions, it is shown that the adaptive system is stabilizable almost surely. As a by-product, it is also established that the controlled process is positive recurrent