Superconductivity in overdoped cuprates can be understood from a BCS perspective!

I will present a theoretical perspective on the phase diagram of an "ideal" (i.e.disorder free) hole-doped cuprate, which in particular assumes that in the overdoped range of doping and below a crossover temperature in excess of the optimal Tc, the system can be well understood on the basis of a Fermi-liquid description of the normal state and BCS mean-field theory of the d-wave superconducting state. (This involves no assumptions concerning the significance of electron-phonon interactions.) For this perspective to be consistent with a host of experimental observations in actual cuprates, it is necessary to posit that there is a crossover from a strongly correlated underdoped regime (where a different theoretical perspective is necessary) to the more weakly correlated overdoped regime. Given thatthere exists a significant body of experiments on overdoped cuprates that areinconsistent with this perspective, it is also necessary to argue that those observed features can be attributed to the expected effects of the intrinsic disorder associated with most of the materials being solid state solutions (alloys). As a test of this idea, I will make a series of falsifiable predictions concerning the expected behavior of overdoped cuprates as the effects of disorder are decreased.