Peter Hirschfeld

University of Florida

Theory of Josephson scanning tunneling microscopy with conventional superconducting tip on BSCCO-2212

Understanding STM on unconventional superconducting surfaces,  while incorporating materials specific information about electronic structure, has no general solution. In recent years a practical method based on first principles calculations of surface Wannier functions has provided some important advances, however.  

Until now, this method has been restricted  to the calculation of ordinary quasiparticle tunneling conductances, on cuprates, Fe-based and heavy fermion superconductors, preserving local crystal symmetries and providing sub-unit cell resolution.  Here I discuss the general problem of extending this method to Josephson scanning tunneling measurements, and give preliminary results for the cuprate material BSCCO-2212.