Phenomenology of the normal state of Cu-O high-temperature superconductors

The universal anomalies in the normal state of Cu-O high-temperature superconductors follow from a single hypothesis: There exist charge- and spin-density excitations with the absorptive part of the polarizability at low frequencies proportional to /T, where T is the temperature, and constant otherwise. The behavior in such a situation may be characterized as that of a marginal Fermi liquid. The consequences of this hypothesis are worked out for a variety of physical properties including superconductivity.