Insensitivity of $d$-wave pairing to disorder in the high-temperature cuprate superconductors

Insensitivity of $d$ -wave pairing to disorder in the high-temperature cuprate superconductors

A. F. Kemper, D. G. S. P. Doluweera, T. A. Maier, M. Jarrell, P. J. Hirschfeld, and H-P. Cheng

Phys. Rev. B 79, 104502 – Published 3 March 2009

Abstract

Using a dynamical cluster quantum Monte Carlo approximation, we investigate the effect of local disorder on the stability of $d$ -wave superconductivity including the effect of electronic correlations in both particle-particle and particle-hole channels. With increasing impurity potential, we find an initial rise of the critical temperature due to an enhancement of antiferromagnetic spin correlations, followed by a decrease of $T_{c}$ due to scattering from impurity-induced moments and ordinary pair breaking. We discuss the weak initial dependence of $T_{c}$ on impurity concentration found in comparison to experiments on cuprates.