Unconventional Superconductivity in UPd_2Al_3 from Realistic Selfconsistent Calculations

Abstract

Realistic selfconsistent calculations of unconventional superconductivity in a heavy-fermion material are reported. Our calculations for UPd$_2$Al$_3$ start from accurate energy band dispersions that are computed within the local spin-density functional theory and provide Fermi surfaces in agreement with experiment. Using physically motivated, realistic pairing potentials it is shown that the superconducting gap has two lines of nodes around the z-axis, thus exhibiting d-wave symmetry in the $A_{1g}$ representation of the $D_{6h}$ point group. Our results suggest that in a superconductor with gap nodes, the prevailing gap symmetry is dictated by the constraint that nodes must be as far as possible from high-density areas.