New preprint announcement

We are pleased to announce the submission of our latest preprint to arXiv, titled First-principles evidence for conventional superconductivity in a quasicrystal approximant.

Quasicrystals present one of the most intriguing puzzles in condensed matter physics: they exhibit long-range order without translational symmetry—a regime where the very foundations of BCS theory are not straightforwardly applicable. Yet experiments on quasicrystals and their approximant crystals consistently point to conventional, s-wave, electron-phonon coupled superconductivity. How can this be?

In this work, we directly address this seeming contradiction from first principles. Using state-of-the-art ab initio methods, we compute the superconducting properties of the recently discovered approximant crystal Al₁₃Os₄ and quantitatively reproduce its bulk T_c. This represents, to our knowledge, the first ab initio determination of T_c for an approximant crystal—establishing that the electron-phonon framework remains predictive even in these exotic structural regimes.

But we didn’t stop at validation. Using the generalized quasichemical approximation for alloy modeling in the decagonal Al-Os family, we predict tunable superconductivity in Al₁₃Os_4-xRe_x and Al₁₃Os_4-xIr_x. Most excitingly, we find that Al₁₃Re₄ is dynamically stable and estimated to have a T_c approximately 30% higher than Al₁₃Os₄.

Perhaps most importantly, we argue that the T_c obtained for approximant crystals provides practical bounds for the T_c of their parent quasicrystals. This suggests that the quasicrystalline counterparts of Al₁₃Os₄ and Al₁₃Re₄ could harbor the highest T_c among quasicrystals discovered to date—opening a new frontier in the search for unconventional superconductors in aperiodic systems.

This work bridges fundamental theory with materials prediction, demonstrating that conventional superconductivity theory extends its reach even into the remarkable world of quasicrystals. We’re excited to hear the community’s thoughts!

Check out the preprint arXiv:2511.09224.