Out-of-plane impurities induced the deviation from the monotonic d-wave superconducting gap in cuprate superconductors

Abstract

The electronic structure of cuprate superconductors is studied within the kinetic energy driven superconducting mechanism in the presence of the out-of-plane impurities. With increasing the impurity concentration, although both superconducting coherence peaks around nodal and antinodal regions are suppressed, the position of the leading-edge mid-point of the electron spectrum around the nodal region remains at the same position, while it is shifted towards higher binding energies around the antinodal region, this leads to a strong deviation from the monotonic d-wave superconducting gap in the out-of-plane impurity-controlled cuprate superconductors.

8 pages, 3 figures, added discussions and updated references, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B