Nodal superconductivity and antinodal pseudogap in cuprate superconductors

Abstract: According to recent experimental findings the leading pairing resides in the nodal (FS arcs) momentum region of hole doped cuprates. The pseudogap is an antinodal feature. A corresponding multiband model of the electronic background evolving with doping serves the usually presented phase diagram. The pairing is due by the pair-transfer between overlapping nodal defect (polaron) band and the itinerant band. A bare gap vanishing with extended doping between the antinodal defect subband and the itinerant band top leads to the formation of the pseudogap as a perturbative band-structure effect. The calculated behaviour of two superconducting gaps and of the pseudogap on the whole doping scale is in qualitative agreement with the observations. Arguments to include cuprates into the class of multiband–multigap superconductors are given by these results. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]