Abstract
Motivated by recent scanning tuneling microscopy (STM) experiments on [J. E. Hoffman et al., Science 466 (2002); C. Howald et al., cond-mat/0201546 (unpublished); J. E. Hoffman et al., Science 1149 (2002): K. McElroy et al. (unpublished); C. Howald et al., cond-mat/0208442 (unpublished)], we study the effects of weak translational symmetry breaking on the quasiparticle spectrum of a d-wave superconductor. We develop a general formalism to discuss periodic charge order, as well as quasiparticle scattering off localized defects. We argue that the STM experiments in cannot be explained using a simple charge density wave order parameter, but are consistent with the presence of a periodic modulation in the electron hopping or pairing amplitude. We review the effects of randomness and pinning of the charge order and compare it to the impurity scattering of quasiparticles. We also discuss implications of weak translational symmetry breaking for angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy experiments.
- Received 30 March 2002
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.67.094514
©2003 American Physical Society