Fermi surface
The electronic structure of superconducting cuprates is highly anisotropic (see the crystal structure of YBCO or BSCCO). Therefore, the Fermi surface of HTSC is very close to the Fermi surface of the doped CuO2 plane (or multi-planes, in case of multi-layer cuprates) and can be presented on the 2‑D reciprocal space (or momentum space) of the CuO2 lattice. The typical Fermi surface within the first CuO2 Brillouin zone is sketched in Fig. 1 (left). It can be derived from the band structure calculations or measured by angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). Fig. 1 (right) shows the Fermi surface of BSCCO measured by ARPES. In a wide range of charge carrier concentration (doping level), in which the hole-doped HTSC are superconducting, the Fermi surface is hole-like ("i.e." open, as shown in Fig. 1). This results in an inherent in-plane anisotropy of the electronic properties of HTSC.