Disorder Effects in Superconductors with Anisotropic Pairing: From Cooper Pairs to Compact Bosons

In the weak coupling BCS-approximation normal impurities do not influence superconducting T c in significant manner in case of isotropic s -wave pairing. However, in case of d -wave pairing these are strongly pair-breaking. This fact is in rather strong contradiction with many experiments on disordered high-T c superconductors assuming the d -wave nature of pairing in these systems. With the growth of electron attraction within the Cooper pair the system smoothly crosses over from BCS-pairs to compact Boson picture of superconductivity. As pairing strength grows and pairs become compact significant deviations from universal Abrikosov-Gorkov dependence of T c on disorder ap-pear in case of d -wave pairing with superconducting state becoming more stable than in the weak coupling case. As high- T c superconductors are actually in the intermediate region with Cooper pairs size of the order of few interatomic lengths, these results can explain the relative stability of d -wave pairing under rather strong disordering.