Opening of a pseudogap in a quasi-two dimensional superconductor due to critical thermal fluctuations

Abstract

We examine the role of the anisotropy of superconducting critical thermal fluctuations in the opening of a pseudogap in a quasi-two dimensional superconductor such as a cuprate-oxide high-temperature superconductor. When the anisotropy between planes and their perpendicular axis is large enough and its superconducting critical temperature T_c is high enough, the fluctuations are much developed in its critical region so that lifetime widths of quasiparticles are large and the energy dependence of the selfenergy deviates from that of Landau's normal Fermi liquids. A pseudogap opens in such a critical region because quasiparticle spectra around the chemical potential are swept away due to the large lifetime widths. The pseudogap never smoothly evolves into a superconducting gap; it starts to open at a temperature higher than T_c while the superconducting gap starts to open just at T_c. When T_c is rather low but the ratio of varepsilon_G(0)/k_BT_c, with varepsilon_G(0) the superconducting gap at T=0K and k_B the Boltzmann constant, is much larger than a value about 4 according to the mean-field theory, the pseudogap must be closing as temperature T approaches to the low T_c because thermal fluctuations become less developed as T decreases. Critical thermal fluctuations cannot cause the opening of a prominent pseudogap in an almost isotropic three dimensional superconductor, even if its T_c is high.