Effect of spontaneous decay of superconductor quasiparticles in the tunneling density of states
Superconductivity has been successfully described with either the Landau-Ginzburg theory of second order phase transitions or with strong-coupling versions of the original BCS theory for almost fifty years. Recent tunneling and photoemission data on the cuprate oxide superconductors may now provide evidence of corrections to the mean field approximation. It has been shown by Zasadzinski et al. that there is a dip at eV {approx_equal} 3{Delta}{sub 0} in the SIS tunneling conductance, which is the derivative of the current across a superconductor-insulator-superconductor junction with respect to the applied voltage, for a set of cuprate superconductors whose {Tc}`s range from 5.5K to 100K. Recently L. Coffey and I proposed an explanation of this feature in terms of the spontaneous decay of mean field quasiparticles. We showed that corrections to the mean field approximation for a superconductor lead to different frequency thresholds for spontaneous quasiparticle decay with different superconductor order parameter symmetries. These effects lead to features in the superconductor density of states and in the SIS tunneling conductance and provide experimental evidence of d-wave symmetry for the superconductor order parameter in the cuprates. I discuss model and also evidence of quasiparticle decay in ARPES data on Bi{sub 2}Sr{sub 2}CaCu{sub 2}O{sub 8}.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-36
- OSTI ID:
- 10159263
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR--93-1384; CONF-930367--3; ON: DE93012681
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
BASIC SUPERCONDUCTIVITY STUDIES
BISMUTH COMPOUNDS
CALCIUM COMPOUNDS
COPPER OXIDES
DECAY
HAMILTONIANS
HIGH-TC SUPERCONDUCTORS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MEAN-FIELD THEORY
QUASI PARTICLES
STRONTIUM COMPOUNDS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
TUNNEL EFFECT