Spin-orbit scattering in d-wave superconductors

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, DMT-IPM CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

Received: 30 April 1999
Accepted: 3 September 1999

Abstract

When non-magnetic impurities are introduced in a d-wave superconductor, both thermodynamic and spectral properties are strongly affected if the impurity potential is close to the strong resonance limit. In addition to the scalar impurity potential, the charge carriers are also spin-orbit coupled to the impurities. Here it is shown that i) close to the unitarity limit for the impurity scattering, the spin-orbit contribution is of the same order of magnitude as the scalar scattering and cannot be neglected, ii) the spin-orbit scattering is pair-breaking and iii) induces a small id_xy component to the off-diagonal part of the self-energy.