BOSONS, GAUGE-FIELDS, AND HIGH-T-C CUPRATES

A simple model of a degenerate two-dimensional Bose liquid interacting with a fluctuating gauge field is investigated as a possible candidat e to describe the charge degree of freedom in the normal state of the cuprate superconductors. We show that the fluctuating gauge field effi ciently destroys superfluidity even in the Bose degenerate regime. We discuss the nature of the resulting normal state in terms of the geome tric properties of the imaginary-time paths of the bosons. We will als o present numerical results on the transport properties and the densit y correlations in the system. We find a transport scattering rate of ( h) over bar/tau(tr)similar to 2k(B)T, consistent with the experiments on the cuprates in the normal state. We also find that the density cor relations of our model resemble the charge correlations of the t-J mod el.