Resistance of high-temperature cuprate superconductors

Cuprate superconductors have many different atoms per unit cell. A large fraction of cells (5-25%) must be modified ('doped') before the material superconducts. Thus it is not surprising that there is little consensus on the superconducting mechanism, despite almost 200 000 papers (Mann 2011 Nature 475 280). Most astonishing is that for the simplest electrical property, the resistance, 'despite sustained theoretical efforts over the past two decades, its origin and its relation to the superconducting mechanism remain a profound, unsolved mystery' (Hussey et al 2011 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 369 1626). Currently, model parameters used to fit normal state properties are experiment specific and vary arbitrarily from one doping to the other. Here, we provide a quantitative explanation for the temperature and doping dependence of the resistivity in one self-consistent model by showing that cuprates are intrinsically inhomogeneous with a percolating metallic region and insulating regions. Using simple counting of dopant-induced plaquettes, we show that the superconducting pairing and resistivity are due to phonons.