Temperature- and magnetic-field-dependent thermal conductivity of pure and Zn-doped Bi_{2}Sr_{2}CaCu_{2}O_{8+\delta} single crystals

TL;DR

This study investigates how temperature and magnetic field affect the thermal conductivity of pure and Zn-doped Bi-2212 single crystals, revealing the importance of quasiparticle-vortex scattering in heat transport.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed comparison of thermal conductivity in pure and Zn-doped Bi-2212 crystals considering impurity scattering effects.

Findings

The 'plateau' in (H) is not observed in most crystals.

Impurity scattering rates are estimated for pure and Zn-doped samples.

Quasiparticle-vortex scattering is crucial for understanding heat transport.

Abstract

The thermal conductivity \kappa of Bi-2212 is measured in pure and Zn-doped crystals as a function of temperature and magnetic field. The in-plane resistivity is also measured on the identical samples. Using these data, we make a crude estimate of the impurity-scattering rate \Gamma of the pure and the Zn-doped crystals. Our measurement show that the "plateau" in the \kappa(H) profile is not observed in the majority of our Bi-2212 crystals, including one of the cleanest crystals available to date. The estimated values of \Gamma for the pure and Zn-doped samples allow us to compare the \kappa(H) data with the existing theories of the quasiparticle heat transport in d-wave superconductors under magnetic field. Our analysis indicates that a proper inclusion of the quasiparticle-vortex scattering, which is expected to play the key role in the peculiar behavior of the \kappa(H), is important for a quantitative understanding of the QP heat transport in the presence of the vortices.