Weak anisotropic impurity scattering in unconventional superconductors

The effect of weak anisotropic (momentum-dependent) impurity scattering in unconventional superconductors has been investigated. It is shown that the anisotropic scattering can lead either to a small reduction or a small enhancement of the isotropic pair-breaking effect. The influence of the anisotropy of the scattering potential becomes significant for the order parameters with large Fermi surface average values. In that case an unexpected enhancement (up to similar to 10%) of the critical temperature T-c over the critical temperature in the absence of impurities T-c0 is predicted for a small impurity concentration. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.