Impurities and Quasi-One Dimensional Transport in a D-wave Superconductor

Abstract

Impurity scattering in the unitary limit produces low energy quasiparticles with anisotropic spectrum in a two-dimensional $d$-wave superconductor. We describe a new {\em quasi-one-dimensional } limit of the quasiparticle scattering, which might occur in a superconductor with short coherence length and with {\em finite} impurity potential range. The dc conductivity in a $d$-wave superconductor is predicted to be proportional to the normal state scattering rate and is impurity-{\em dependent}. We show that the {\em quasi-one-dimensional } regime occurs in high-$T_c$ superconductors at low temperatures $T\lesssim 10$~K. We argue that the impurities produce weak localization, in the {\em orthogonal } universality class, of the quasiparticles in a $d$-wave superconductor.