NORMAL STATE TRANSPORT-PROPERTIES OF YBA2CU3O7 AND YBA2CU3O8 SUPERCONDUCTORS - PREDICTIONS AND COMPARISON WITH EXPERIMENTS

Transport properties of YBa2Cu3O7 and YBa2Cu4O8 are calculated by solving the Boltzmann equation using the electronic energy band structure obtained with the full potential linearized augmented plane wave (FLAPW) method within the local density approximation. The Hall coefficient R(H) of YBa2Cu4O8 for magnetic field parallel to the c-axis is found to be in good agreement with existing high-temperature experimental values. Qualitative agreement with experiment is also found for the in-plane anisotropies in both compounds, pointing to the role of the Cu-O chains in the normal state transport properties of these compounds. Finally, with the use of new untwinned single crystal data for YBa2Cu3O7, we find good agreement between the experimental and calculated resistivity versus temperature slope, with an estimated value of lambda-tr almost-equal-to 1.