On Distinguishing d-wave from Highly Anisotropic s-wave Superconductors

Systematic impurity doping in the Cu-O plane of the hole-doped cuprate superconductors may allow one to decide between unconventional (”d-wave”) and anisotropic conventional (”s-wave”) states as possible candidates for the order parameter in these materials. We show that potential scattering of any strength always increases the gap minima of such s-wave states, leading to activated behavior in temperature with characteristic impurity concentration dependence in observable quantities such as the penetration depth. A magnetic component to the scattering may destroy the energy gap and give rise to conventional gapless behavior, or lead to a nonmonotonic dependence of the gap on impurity concentration. We discuss how experiments constrain this analysis.