Electronic specific heat discontinuity at critical temperature of high-Tc superconductors

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the specific heat jump at the critical temperature of high-Tc superconductor having the constant and the Van Hove Singularity density of states. By using the theory of Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (BCS) and considering the pairing states to be isotropic s-wave and anisotropic d-wave, we calculate the ratio between the jump in the specific heat and the normal phase specific heat at the critical temperature as a function of the debye frequency, the critical temperature, and the fermi energy, the results show significant deviations from the BCS value of 1.43