Abstract It is widely believed that cuprates (i) must be strong-coupling superconductors, (ii) their superconducting phase curve is governed by phase fluctuations, and (iii) exhibit a loss of superfluid density with increasing overdoping, hand-in-hand with the fall in T c . Here we examine these issues for several canonical cuprates in the light of their electronic specific heat. We find evidence for near-weak-coupling behaviour where the mean-field T c is governed by the gap amplitude, and fluctuations in both amplitude and phase serve only to partially diminish T c from this mean-field value. We also find that, over the doping range considered, the superfluid density is not depleted with overdoping. As such, this work questions several prevailing paradigms in cuprate physics 1.
J. L. Tallon (Thu,) studied this question.