Cuprates positron annihilation

Studies on other high-temperature superconductors Positron annihilation measurements across Tc, coupled with the calculations of PDD have been carried out in a variety of hole-doped superconductors that include YBa2Cu40g [48], Bi-Sr-Ca-Cu-0 [49], and Tl-Ba-Ca-Cu-0 [50, 51] systems. We will not labor with the details here, except to state that a variety of temperature dependencies are seen and these can be rationalized when the results are analysed in terms of positron density distribution and the electron-positron overlap function [39]. These calculations show that the positron s sensitivity to the superconducting transition arises primarily from the ability to probe the Cu-O network in the Cu-0 layer. The different temperature dependencies of lifetime, i.e., both the increase and decrease, can be understood in terms of a model of local electron transfer from the planar oxygen atom to the apical oxygen atom, after taking into account the correct positron density distribution within the unit cell of the cuprate superconductor. 

After investigating the positron behavior, the next step is to solve the band structure and to calculate the momentum density p (p). It is rather controversial to describe the electronic structure of high-Tc superconductors by band structure. But it is almost the only way to obtain a calculated momentum density in order to interpret the positron measurements. We refer to the chapter by Pickett and Mazin in this volume (ch. 193) for a general discussion of band-structure calculations in superconducting cuprates. Studies in relation with positron annihilation have been made using different methods FLAPW (Massidda 1990, Massidda et al. 1991), LMTO (Bansil et al. 1988, Barbiellini et al. 1992,... 

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