C. Kubert et Pj. Hirschfeld, VORTEX CONTRIBUTION TO SPECIFIC-HEAT OF DIRTY D-WAVE SUPERCONDUCTORS - BREAKDOWN OF SCALING, Solid state communications, 105(7), 1998, pp. 459-463
We consider the problem of the vortex contribution to thermal properti
es of dirty d-wave superconductors. In the clean limit, the main contr
ibution to the density of states in a d-wave superconductor arises fro
m extended quasiparticle states which may be treated semiclassically,
giving rise to a specific heat contribution delta C(H) similar to H-1/
2. We show that the extended states continue to dominate the dirty lim
it, but lead to a H log H behavior at the lowest fields, H-c1 less tha
n or similar to H much less than H-c2. This crossover may explain rece
nt discrepancies in specific heat measurements at low temperatures and
fields in the cuprate superconductors. We discuss the range of validi
ty of recent predictions of scaling with H-1/2/T in real samples. (C)
1998 Elsevier Science Ltd.