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Revised Tolmachev-Morel-Anderson pseudopotential for layered conventional superconductors with nonlocal Coulomb interaction

We study the effects of static nonlocal Coulomb interactions in layered conventional superconductors and show that they generically suppress superconductivity and reduce the critical temperature. Although the nonlocal Coulomb interaction leads to a significant structure in the superconducting gap function, we find that most properties can be effectively described by means of an appropriately revised local Coulomb pseudopotential $\tildeμ_C^*$, which is larger than the commonly adopted retarded Tolmachev-Morel-Anderson pseudopotential $μ^*_C$. To understand this, we analyze the Bethe-Salpeter equation describing the screening of Coulomb interaction in the superconducting state and obtain an expression for $\tildeμ_C^*$, which is valid in the presence of nonlocal Coulomb interactions. This analysis also reveals how the structure of the nonlocal Coulomb interaction weakens the screening effects from high-energy pair fluctuations and therefore yields larger values of the pseudopotential. Our findings are especially important for layered conventional superconductors with small Fermi energies and can be easily taken into account ab initio studies.