# Comment on “Predominantly Superconducting Origin …”, by N. Miyakawa, et al.

preprint: NUSc/96-03  

Recent studies have found that the tunneling gap in Bi<sub>2</sub>Sr<sub>2</sub>CaCu<sub>2</sub>O<sub>8</sub> (BSCCO) scales with the pseudogap, and not with the superconducting $`T_c`$, as the doping is varied, Fig. 1. Miyakawa, et al. provide evidence that this gap is solely associated with superconductivity and superconducting fluctuations, thereby contradicting scenarios in which the pseudogap is associated with competing magnetic or density wave instabilities. Here, we reanalyze the data of Ref. , and show that while fluctuation effects are important, there appears to be a second, non-superconducting component of the gap which increases strongly with underdoping. We discuss three points raised by Miyakawa, et al.

(1) There is a single gap at all dopings. This is actually consistent with a number of two component theories. In our model, the dominant gap, at the saddle point $`(\pi ,0)`$, is the vector sum of its components:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }_s^2+\mathrm{\Delta }_p^2},$$
(1)   
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$ is the superconducting gap and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$ a competing pseudogap. This form was also proposed phenomenologically by Loram, et al.. In contrast, near $`(\pi /2,\pi /2)`$ our model predicts a gap near the Fermi level due to superconductivity only. For a d-wave gap, there is no peak near $`(\pi /2,\pi /2)`$, and this feature would be difficult to detect in tunneling. However, Panagopoulos and Xiang have determined that the slope of the gap near the gap zero at $`(\pi /2,\pi /2)`$ scales with $`T_c`$, and not with the gap near $`(\pi ,0)`$!

(2) There is a dip feature above the tunneling peak, which scales with the gap. Since the dip is due to reduced scattering in the superconducting state, it provides a measure of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$. Thus, Fig. 2 of Ref.  shows that $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s/\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is not constant, since the dip minimum systematically evolves with doping. In Fig. 1 we provide two estimates of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$ and (from Eq. 1) $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$: the $`\times `$’s (diamonds) are found by assuming that the dip minimum (upper edge of the dip) is exactly proportional to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$ and that $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$ vanishes in the most overdoped sample. The upper edge probably provides a better estimate, since the lower edge of the dip can be obscured by the upper edge of the tunneling peak.

(3) The Josephson $`I_cR`$ product is found to increase in the underdoped regime ($`+`$’s in Fig. 1), scaling well with the upper-edge estimate of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$. Thus, there are clearly enhanced two-dimensional fluctuations in the underdoped regime, where the ratio $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s/T_c`$ increases by about a factor of two (Fig. 1). However, at the lowest doping, the non-superconducting component of the gap has grown to equal $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$ in magnitude. The solid curve in Fig. 1 represents a universal pseudogap curve for YBa<sub>2</sub>Cu<sub>3</sub>O<sub>7-δ</sub>, La<sub>2-x</sub>Sr<sub>x</sub>CuO<sub>4</sub> (LSCO) and BSCCO. It extrapolates to a very large pseudogap, $`300`$meV ($`2.2J`$, where $`J`$ is the exchange energy) at half filling. This large zero-doping-limit gap is likely to be predominantly due to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$.

Publication 744 of the Barnett Institute.

$`:`$ On leave of absence from Inst. of Atomic Physics, Bucharest, Romania