On the nature of the superconducting gap in the cuprates

Abstract

Recent experiments indicate that the excitation spectrum of the cuprates is characterised, in the superconducting state, by two energy scales: the ``coherence energy'' \Delta_c and the ``pseudogap'' \Delta_p. Here we consider a simple generalisation of the BCS model that yields exotic pairing and can describe, phenomenologically, the generic trends in the critical temperature T_c of cuprate superconductors. We use the model to predict the gap in the single-particle spectrum arising from the superconductivity and we find evidence that it corresponds to the lower of the two energy scales, \Delta_c, seen in the experiments. This supports the view that the origin of the pseudogap is not superconducting fluctuations.