The Generalized Joint Density of States and Its Application to Exploring the Pairing Symmetry of High-T_c Superconductors

We introduce a generalized joint density of states (GJDOS), which incorporates the coherent factors into the JDOS, to study quasiparticle interference (QPI) in superconductors. The intimate relation between the Fourier-transformed local density of states and GJDOS is revealed: they correspond respectively to the real and imaginary parts of a generalized impurity-response function, and particularly share the same angular factors and singular boundaries, as seen from our approximate analytic results for d-wave superconductors. Remarkably, our numerical GJDOS analysis agrees well with the QPI patten of d-wave cuprates and s_±-wave iron-based superconductors. Moreover, we illustrate that the present GJDOS scenario can uncover the sign features of the superconducting gap and thus can be used to explore the pairing symmetry of the A_1?xFe_2?ySe₂ (A=K,Cs, etc) superconductors.