Superconductivity mediated by polar modes in doped ferroelectrics

The occurrence of superconductivity in doped SrTiO3 and related materials at low carrier densities points to the presence of an unusually strong pairing interaction that has eluded understanding for several decades. We present experimental results showing the pressure dependence of the superconducting transition temperature, Tc, that sheds light on the nature of this interaction. We find that Tc increases dramatically when the energy gap of ferroelectric critical modes is suppressed, i.e., as the ferroelectric quantum critical point is approached, in a way reminiscent of behaviour observed in magnetic counterparts. However, in contrast to the latter, the coupling of itinerant electrons to the critical modes in ferroelectrics is predicted to be small. We present a superconductivity model to make quantitative comparisons with experiments and show that an enhancement of Tc near to a ferroelectric quantum critical point arises due to the virtual exchange of longitudinal hybrid-polar-modes, even in the absence of a direct coupling to the transverse critical modes.