Nodal-antinodal dichotomy from pairing disorder in d-wave superconductors

TL;DR

This paper models the local density of states in high-Tc d-wave superconductors with weak off-diagonal disorder, explaining experimental LDOS features and their evolution with disorder complexity.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal model capturing LDOS features and anisotropies observed in STM experiments, highlighting the impact of disorder complexity.

Findings

LDOS features match experimental patterns at different energies

High-energy anisotropic local domains observed

LDOS features become less correlated with disorder complexity

Abstract

We study the basic features of the local density of states (LDOS) observed in STM experiments on high-T$_c$ d-wave superconductors in the context of a minimal model of a d-wave superconductor which has {\it weakly} modulated off-diagonal disorder. We show that the low and high energy features of the LDOS are consistent with the observed experimental patterns and in particular, the anisotropic local domain features at high energies. At low energies, we obtain not only the scattering peaks predicted by the octet model, but also weak features that should be experimentally accessible. Finally, we show that the emerging features of the LDOS lose their correspondence with the features of the imposed disorder, as its complexity increases spatially.