Simulating Superconducting Properties of Overdoped Cuprates: the Role of Inhomogeneity

Abstract

Theoretical studies of disordered $d$-wave superconductors have focused, with a few exceptions, on optimally doped models with strong scatterers. Addressing recent controversies about the nature of the overdoped cuprates, however, requires studies of the weaker scattering associated with dopant atoms. Here we study simple models of such systems in the self-consistent Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) framework, and compare to disorder-averaged results using the self-consistent-T-matrix-approximation (SCTMA). Despite surprisingly linear in energy behavior of the low-energy density of states even for quite disordered systems, the superfluid density in such cases retains a quadratic low-temperature variation of the penetration depth, unlike other BdG results reported recently. We trace the discrepancy to smaller effective system size employed in that work. Overall, the SCTMA performs remarkably well, with the exception of highly disordered systems with strongly suppressed superfluid density. We explore this interesting region where gap inhomogeneity dominates measured superconducting properties, and compare with overdoped cuprates.

12 pages, 9 figures

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• Puddle formation, persistent gaps, and non-mean-field breakdown of superconductivity in overdoped (Pb,Bi)2Sr2CuO6+δ
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Cited by in corpus (9)

• From non-metal to strange metal at the stripe-percolation transition in La${}_{2-x}$Sr${}_x$CuO${}_4$
• Extended strange metal regime from superconducting puddles
• Inhomogeneity, Fluctuations, and Gap Filling in Overdoped Cuprates
• Correlation between optical phonon softening and superconducting $T_c$ in YBa${}_2$Cu${}_3$O${}_x$ within $d$-wave Eliashberg theory
• Constrains on s and d components of electron boson coupling constants in one band d wave Eliashberg theory for high Tc superconductors
• Optical conductivity of overdoped cuprates from ab-initio out-of-plane impurity potentials
• Persistence of vortexlike phase fluctuations in underdoped to heavily overdoped Bi-2201 cuprates
• The Low-Temperature Phenomenology of Gap Inhomogeneity in the Cuprate Superconductors: High-Energy Granularity, Low-Energy Homogeneity, and Spectral Kinks
• Emergence of Fermi-liquid and BCS physics in overdoped cuprates