On the Normal State of the High Temperature Superconductors
  Based on a Fermi liquid model, we present several results on the normal state of the optimally doped and overdoped cuprate superconductors. Our main result is an analytic demonstration, backed by self-consistent numerical calculations, of the linear in temperature resistivity and linear in 1/(energy) optical conductivity, provided the interacting Fermi liquid has strong peaks in its density of states (van-Hove singularities in 2 dimensions) near the chemical potential. Moreover, we find that the interactions tend to pin these strong peaks close to the chemical potential. This fact compares favorably with experiment on a variety of cuprates. Finally, we show that the above scenario yields naturally the low energy dependence of the experimentally determined susceptibility, without reference to spin waves. 
George Kastrinakis (University of Illinois - Urbana)