Effects of dilute nonmagnetic impurities on the Q=(pi,pi) spin-fluctuation spectrum in YBa2Cu3O7

Abstract

The effects of nonmagnetic impurities on the Q=(pi,pi) spin-fluctuation spectral weight Im chi(Q,omega) are studied within the framework of the two-dimensional Hubbard model using the random phase approximation. In the first part of the paper, the effects of the nonmagnetic impurities on the magnetic susceptibility of the noninteracting (U=0) system, chi_0(Q,omega), are calculated with the self-energy and the vertex corrections using various forms of the effective electron-impurity interaction. Here, the range and the strength of the impurity potential are varied as well as the concentration of the impurities. It is shown that the main effect of dilute impurities on chi_0(Q,omega) is to cause a weak smearing. In the second part, Im chi(Q,omega) is calculated for the interacting system. Here, the calculations are concentrated on the processes which involve the impurity scattering of the spin fluctuations with finite momentum transfers. In order to make comparisons with the experimental data on the frequency dependence of Im chi(Q,omega) in Zn substituted YBa2Cu3O7, results are given for various values of the model parameters.