On the theory of layered high-temperature superconductors

Abstract

Assuming that charge carriers form a Fermi liquid state, we study a model for layered high-temperature superconductors with unretarded intralayer and interlayer pairing. Guided by band structure calculations and inverse photoemission experiments, we adopt a tight binding band with nearest and next-nearest neighbors hopping within the sheets and weak interlayer hopping. The gap equations are solved numerically, without imposing a cutoff energy, characteristic to phonon mediated superconductivity. On this basis we calculate the gap parameters,T _c , the tunneling conductance, infrared absorption and the coherence length for various band fillings ρ=1/2−x by introducing excess holes of concentrationx. Assuming the interlayer coupling strength to be smaller than the intralayer one, our main results are as follows:T _c is dominated by the intralayer properties, reaching a maximum atx≈0.3, where strong coupling features appear. In the presence of interlayer pairing, the gap becomes anisotropic perpendicular to the layers, and standard BCS-behavior is modified. In particular the BCS-square root singularity in the density of states and in the tunneling conductance is replaced by van Hove singularities characterizing the anisotropic gap. In particular, we investigate the anisotropy of the tunneling conductance for specular and diffuse tunneling for a junction parallel or perpendicular to the layers, infrared absorption, as well as the coherence length, parallel and perpendicular to the layers.