Local density of states of a strongly type-II d-wave superconductor: The binary alloy model in a magnetic field

TL;DR

This paper models the local density of states in a strongly type-II d-wave superconductor, accounting for impurity and vortex scattering, and finds vortex effects dominate the LDOS behavior, aligning with experimental observations.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent calculation of LDOS considering both impurity and vortex scattering with vortex pinning effects in a d-wave superconductor.

Findings

Vortex scattering significantly influences the LDOS.

Impurity potential and density have minor effects on DOS.

Results qualitatively match experimental data with vortex pinning at impurities.

Abstract

We calculate self-consistently the local density of states (LDOS) of a d-wave superconductor considering the scattering of the quasiparticles off randomly distributed impurities and off externally induced vortices. The impurities and the vortices are randomly distributed but the vortices are preferably located near the impurities. The increase of either the impurity repulsive potential or the mpurity density only affects the density of states (DOS) slightly. The dominant effect is due to the vortex scattering. The results for the LDOS agree qualitatively with experimental results considering that most vortices are pinned at the impurities.