Inelastic scattering and pair breaking in anisotropic and isotropic superconductors.
01 January 1988
The pair breaking effect of inelastic scattering of electrons off boson fluctuations is examined for anisotropic isotropic superconductors. We show that only the low frequency part of those boson fluctuations which couple differently to the normal and anomalous electron self energies give rise to significant pair-breaking. An approximate model for the pair breaking effect of low frequency bosons is derived and found to agree well with numerical calculations. Applications to heavy fermion superconductors and to the new high T sub c materials are discussed.