Effects of phonon interaction on the pairing in the high-Tc superconductors
Abstract
We study the effects of phonon interaction on the superconducting pairing in the background of a d-wave gap, mediated by antiferromagnetic (AFM) spin fluctuations, using coupled BCS gap equations. We found that phonon interaction can induce a s-wave component to the d-wave gap in the (D+S) form with an interaction anisotropy and in the (D+iS) form without anisotropy, respectively. In either case, however, Tc is not enhanced compared to the pure d-wave pairing without phonon interaction. On the other hand, anisotropic phonon interaction can dramatically enhance the d-wave pairing itself and therefore Tc, together with the AFM spin fluctuation interaction. This (DAFM + Dph) type pairing exhibits strongly reduced isotope coefficient despite the large enhancement of Tc by phonon interaction. Finally, we study the combined type of (DAFM + Dph +iS)) gap and calculate the penetration depth and specific heat to be compared with the experiments.