SUPERCONDUCTIVITY IN THE CUPRATES AS A CONSEQUENCE OF ANTIFERROMAGNETISM AND A LARGE HOLE DENSITY-OF-STATES

We briefly review a theory for the cuprates that has been recently pro posed based on the movement and interaction of holes in antiferromagne tic (AF) backgrounds. A robust peak in the hole density of states (DOS ) is crucial to produce a large critical temperature once a source of hole attraction is identified. The predictions of this scenario are co mpared with experiments. The stability of the calculations after modif ying some of the original assumptions is addressed. We find that if th e dispersion is changed from an antiferromagnetic band at half-filling to a tight-binding cos k(x) + cos k(y) narrow band at [n] = 0.87, the main conclusions of the approach remain basically the same i.e., supe rconductivity appears in the d(x2-y2)-channel and T-c is enhanced by a large DOS. The main features distinguishing these ideas from more sta ndard theories based on antiferromagnetic correlations are here discus sed.