A unified appraoch to the description of high Tc oxides

Using the Fermi liquid approach, one can evaluate the major normal and superconducting parameters of the cuprate superconductors. The anisotropy of both the electronic and crystal structure and the small values of the both the Fermi energy and the Fermi velocity are the key features of these materials. A complete description of experimentally observed behavior can be constructed using this approach. Also, an unconventional method of determining the strength of the electron-phonon coupling based on an analysis of heat capacity and neutron spectroscopy data has been developed. The results of this analysis lead to the conclusion that the cuprates are described by strong coupling, e.g. for La1.85Sr0.15CuO4 the coupling parameter λ is approximately 2. Nevertheless, the observed high Tc values require an additional non-phonon mechanism. In this paper the authors summarize many of the results they have obtained and published previously. They also present some new results