The Superconducting gap in Zn-substituted Bi2212.


  Yuval Lubashevsky  ,  Amit Kanigel  
Technion

  There are two energy scales that govern the phase diagram of the High Tc cuprates, the superconducting temperature- Tc, and the pseudogap temperature- T*. The doping affects both energy scales and makes it difficult to identify the role each of them play in determining the low-temperature gap shape. In our work, we use Zn-substitution to, effectively, separate the energy scales. The Zn atoms replaces Cu in the planes, and reduces Tc, while T* stays unchanged. We used high resolution ARPES to measure the momentum-dependent gap-shape in a series of optimally doped Zn-Bi2212 samples, with different Zn levels. We noticed no change in the gap shape, although Tc is changed by about 20%. Our results indicate that Tc plays no role in the determination of the gap-shape at low temperatures.