Ab initio investigation of electron-phonon interaction in LaSn3 and CaSn3.

We present results for the structural, electronic, vibrational, and electron-phonon coupling properties of LaSn3 and CaSn3 adopting the simple cubic AuCu3-type structure obtained using the the generalised gradient approximation of the density functional theory and plane wave ab initio pseudopotential method. Our electronic results show that both materials display metallic character with several bands, which have mainly Sn 5p character, crossing the Fermi level. The calculated phonon spectrum of LaSn3 accords very well with reported experimental measurements. The weights of the peaks in the Eliashberg spectral function of both compounds are enhanced with the use of experimental lattice constant in our electron-phonon calculation, increasing the value of average electron phonon coupling parameter from 0.876 to 0.937 for LaSn3 (by 7%) and from 0.642 to 0.725 for CaSn3 (by 13%). The use of experimental lattice constant also improves the agreement between theoretical and experimental values of the superconducting temperature for both compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]