Significance of Interlayer Interactions to the Superconducting Mechanism of High-Tc Copper Oxides

Abstract

A systematic analysis of various experimental data on Tc and α (isotope effects) within the Eliashberg formalism including both the intralayer and the interlayer pairing leads us to conclude that i) the trends of Tc for known high-Tc copper oxides are well described in terms of a non-phonon, BCS type (λ<1 and the Cooper-pair like) pairing mechanism whose identity is yet to be understood, and ii) the effective interlayer pair scattering in multilayer compounds, though weaker than the intralayer counterpart, is estimated to be rather substantial (λinterlayer≈0.1). The presence of the appreciable interlayer scattering in the system casts doubt on the possibility of anyon superconductivity which requires two-dimensional topology. © 1990.