Multiband electronic Raman scattering in bilayer superconductors

A theory of electronic Raman scattering in the presence of several energy bands crossing the Fermi surface is developed. The contributions to the light scattering cross section are calculated for each band and it is shown that the cross section can be written in terms of the sum of the single-band contributions and a mixing term which only contributes to the fully symmetric channels (A(1g)). Particular emphasis is placed on screening in bilayer superconductors. Since any charge fluctuation with long-range character in real space is screened by the Coulomb interaction, the relevant fluctuations in a single-layer case are induced between different parts of the Fermi surface. In a single-band d-wave superconductor the scattering at energy transfer twice the maximum gap Delta(max) is dominated by those parts of the Fermi surface where Delta(2)(k) is largest. As a consequence, the fully symmetric (A(1g)) scattering is screened. In the case of a bilayer superconductor, however, charge transfer is possible between layers inside the unit cell. Therefore a formalism is considered which is valid for general band structure, superconducting energy gaps, and interlayer hopping matrix elements. The spectra are calculated for La 2:1:4 and Y 1:2:3 as representative single-layer and bilayer superconductors. The mixing term is found to be negligible and thus the response is well approximated by the sum of the contributions from the individual bands. The theory imposes strong constraints on both the magnitude and symmetry of the energy gap for the bilayer cuprates, and indicates that a nearly identical energy gap of d(x2-y2) symmetry provides a best fit to the data. However, the A(1g) part of the spectrum depends sensitively on many parameters.