Superconducting gap variations induced by structural supermodulation in BSCCO

Abstract

We discuss the possibility that the strain field introduced by the structural supermodulation in Bi-2212 and certain other cuprate materials may modulate the superconducting pairing interaction. We calculate the amplitude of this effect, visible in scanning tunneling spectroscopy experiments, and thereby relate a change in the local superconducting gap with the change in the local dopant displacements induced by the supermodulation. In principle, since this modulation is periodic, sufficiently accurate x-ray measurements or ab initio calculations should enable one to determine which atomic displacements enhance pairing and therefore T_c.

4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of high-temperature superconductors
• Fourier transform spectroscopy of d-wave quasiparticles in the presence of atomic scale pairing disorder
• Thermodynamic transitions in inhomogeneous d-wave superconductors

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Imaging the impact on cuprate superconductivity of varying the inter-atomic distances within individual crystal unit-cells
• Enhancement of the superconducting critical temperature in Bi${}_2$Sr${}_2$CaCu${}_2$O${}_{8+\delta }$ by controlling disorder outside CuO${}_2$ planes
• Structure of BSCCO supermodulation from ab initio calculations
• Extinction of impurity resonances in large-gap regions of inhomogeneous d-wave superconductors