Low energy phenomenology of the overdoped cuprates: Viability of the Landau-BCS paradigm

Abstract

We use dirty d-wave BCS theory to calculate absolute superfluid density, residual specific heat, Volovik effect, and thermal conductivity and compare to experiments on the cuprate superconductor La_{2−x}Sr_{x}CuO_{4}, showing that the theory provides a surprisingly good account of the data across the overdoped region. The starting point is an empirical angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy–based parametrization of the electronic structure, including substantial Fermi-liquid renormalizations. Furthermore, a proper treatment of the less-explored weak out-of-plane dopant disorder limit is found to be essential. We then show that the same approach captures the low energy physics of another important overdoped cuprate, Tl-2201, thought to be much “cleaner” since it exhibits quantum oscillations, low residual resistivities, and small superconducting state Sommerfeld coefficients. We conclude that the low energy properties of cuprates are remarkably well described in the overdoped regime by dirty d-wave theory, without the need to introduce physics beyond the Landau-BCS paradigm.