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Relaxation of Hot Quasiparticles in a d-Wave Superconductor

Superconductivity 2009-11-10 v2 Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

Motivated by recent pump-probe experiments we consider the processes by which "hot" quasiparticles produced near the antinodes of a d-wave superconductor can relax. We show that in a large region of momentum space processes which break Cooper pairs are forbidden by energy and momentum conservation. Equilibration then occurs by scattering with thermal quasiparticles: Umklapp scattering is exponentially suppressed at low temperatures, but small-angle scattering leads to power-law behavior. By solving the Boltzmann equation analytically we make detailed predictions for the temperature and intensity dependence of these processes, which we compare with experiment.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0307168,
  title  = {Relaxation of Hot Quasiparticles in a d-Wave Superconductor},
  author = {P. C. Howell and A. Rosch and P. J. Hirschfeld},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0307168},
  year   = {2009}
}

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Published version (references updated, minor modifications to text)