Rs. Gonnelli et Ga. Ummarino, SURFACE ORDER-PARAMETER DEPRESSION AND PAIR SYMMETRY IN HIGH-T-C JOSEPHSON-JUNCTIONS, Modern physics letters B, 10(16), 1996, pp. 753-763
In the present letter we discuss the effect of the intrinsic surface d
epression of the order parameter on the temperature dependence of the
Josephson critical current in high-T-c SIS and SIS' junctions. The the
oretical results are compared to the I-c(T)R(N)(T) curves we recently
obtained from reproducible data of break junctions made at 4.2 Ii in s
ingle crystals of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x and Bi2Sr2CuO6+x as well as to the e
xperimental data of multilevel edge junctions YBa2Cu3O7+x/SrTiO3/YBa2C
u3O7+x and of planar tunnel junctions YBa2Cu3O7+x/native barrier/Pb. I
n all the studied junctions, the s-wave depressed-gap model can accura
tely reproduce the large deviations from the BCS behavior, both in sha
pe and magnitude. The comparison with the results of a model that expl
ains the same deviations in YBa2Cu3O7+x junctions by assuming a s + id
pair symmetry with a dominant d-wave component shows that our sample-
independent depressed-gap model alone can fully explain the I-c(T)R(N)
(T) values, while the s + id model needs some additional current-lower
ing mechanism to do the same.