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Relaxation of hot quasiparticles in a d-wave superconductor
P C Howell1, A Rosch, P J Hirschfeld
1Institut für Theorie der Kondensierten Materie, Universität Karlsruhe, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany.
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.
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