Impurity effects in unconventional density waves in the unitary limit

Abstract

We investigate the effect of strong, nonmagnetic impurities on quasi-one-dimensional conventional and unconventional density waves (DW and UDW). The conventional case remains unaffected similarly to s-wave superconductors in the presence of weak, nonmagnetic impurities. The thermodynamic properties of UDW were found to be identical to those of a d-wave superconductor in the unitary limit. The real and imaginary part of the optical conductivity is determined for electric fields applied in the perpendicular directions. A new structure can be present corresponding to excitations from the bound state at the Fermi energy to the gap maximum in addition to the usual peak at 2\Delta. In the dc limit, universal electric conductivity is found.