We study the electronic structure of the ladder compounds (SrCa)CuO 14-24-41 and SrCuO 123. LDA calculations for both give similar Cu 3d-bands near the Fermi energy. The hopping parameters estimated by fitting LDA energy bands show a strong anisotropy between the t_perp t_par intra-ladder hopping and small inter-ladder hopping. A downfolding method shows that this anisotropy arises from the ladder structure.The conductivity perpendicular to the ladders is computed assuming incoherent tunneling giving a value close to experiment.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9801280,
title = {Electronic Structure of Ladder Cuprates},
author = {T. F. A. Muller and V. Anisimov and T. M. Rice and I. Dasgupta and T. Saha-Dasgupta},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9801280},
year = {2009}
}