ELECTRONIC RAMAN-SCATTERING AS A PROBE OF ANISOTROPIC ELECTRON PAIRING

A theory for the electronic contribution to Raman scattering in anisot ropic superconductors is presented. It is shown that Raman scattering can provide a wealth of polarization-(symmetry-) dependent information which probes the detailed angular dependence of the energy gap. Using a model band structure, the symmetry-dependent Raman spectra are calc ulated for d(x2-y2) pairing and compared to the data taken on Bi2Sr2Ca Cu2O8. Favorable agreement with the symmetry-dependent electronic spec tra is shown. Further, the impurity dependence of theory is calculated , which provides an unique test of d(x2-y2) pairing.