Inelastic scattering rates in d-wave superconductors

Abstract

The inelastic scattering rates of quasiparticles in a two-dimensional d-wave superconductor, which arise from interactions with either acoustic phonons or other quasiparticles, are calculated within second order perturbation theory. We discover a strong enhancement of scattering with collinear momenta, brouth about by the special kinematics of the two-dimensional fermions with Dirac-like spectrum near the nodes of the d-wave order parameter. In the case of a local instantaneous interparticle potential we find that either an RPA-type resummation of the perturbation series or an inclusion of non-linear corrections to the Dirac spectrum is called for in order to obtain a finite scattering rate in the limit $\omega/T\to 0$. In either way, we find drastic changes in the scattering rate, as compared to the naively expected cubic temperature dependence.