Irradiation-induced suppression of the critical temperature in high-Tc superconductors: Pair breaking versus phase fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how irradiation suppresses the critical temperature in high-Tc superconductors, attributing the effects to pair breaking caused by potential and spin-flip scattering, considering a non-pure d-wave order parameter.

Contribution

It introduces a quantitative explanation of experimental data using a mean-field approach that accounts for combined scattering effects and non-pure d-wave symmetry.

Findings

Irradiation suppresses Tc via pair breaking effects.

Potential and spin-flip scattering jointly influence Tc suppression.

Non-pure d-wave order parameter is essential for explaining data.

Abstract

Experiments on the irradiation-induced suppression of the critical temperature in high-Tc superconductors are analyzed within the mean-field Abrikosov-Gor'kov-like approach. It is shown that the experimental data for YBa2Cu3O7 single crystals can be quantitatively explained by the pair breaking effects under the assumption of the combined effect of potential and spin-flip scattering on the critical temperature and with account for a non-pure d-wave superconducting order parameter.