We study the slave-boson $t\ensuremath{-}J$ model of cuprates with high superconducting transition temperatures, and derive its low-energy effective field theory for the charge-spin separated state in a self-consistent manner. The phase degrees of freedom of the mean field for hoppings of holons and spinons can be regarded as a U(1) gauge field,
Ai. The charge-spin separation occurs below a certain temperature,
TCSS, as a deconfinement phenomenon of the dynamics of
Ai. Below a certain temperature
TSG(<TCSS), the spin-gap phase develops as the Higgs phase of the gauge-field dynamics, and
Ai acquires a mass
mA. The effective field theory near
TSG takes the form of a Ginzburg-Landau theory of a complex scalar field $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ coupled with
Ai, where $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ represents d-wave pairings of spinons. Three dimensionality of the system is crucial to realize a phase transition at
TSG. By using this field theory, we calculate the dc resistivity $\ensuremath{\rho}.$ At
T>TSG, $\ensuremath{\rho}$ is proportional to T. At
T<TSG, it deviates downward from the T-linear behavior as $\ensuremath{\rho}\ensuremath{\propto}T{1\ensuremath{-}{c(T}_{\mathrm{SG}}\ensuremath{-}{T)}^{d}}.$ When the system is near (but not) two dimensional, due to the compactness of the phase of the field $\ensuremath{\lambda},$ the exponent d deviates from its mean-field value
1/2 and becomes a nonuniversal quantity which depends on temperature and doping. This significantly improves the comparison with the experimental data.
We propose an explanation of several experimental features related to the "pseudogap" in high Tc cuprates in terms of a spin-charge gauge theory. In this approach, based on a formal spin-charge separation applied to the t-J model, the low energy effective action describes gapful spinons (with a theoretically derived doping dependence of the gap ms~J(δ| ln δ|)1/2, where δ is the doping concentration) and holons with "small" Fermi surface (∊F~tδ) interacting via a gauge field. The main effect of gauge fluctuations is to introduce a dissipation ~T/χ, where χ is the diamagnetic susceptibility. The competition between the two energy scales, ms and T/χ, is the root in our approach of many phenomena peculiar to in-plane transport properties of the "pseudogap phase". Furthermore the gauge interaction induces binding of spinon and holon into an "electron" resonance. This binding introduces another energy scale, the recombination rate, which dominates the out-of-plane resistivity, yielding an insulating behavior. A good agreement is found between the experimental data and theoretically derived doping and temperature dependence of resistivity, both in-plane and out-of-plane, and spin relaxation.
A real spin-charge separation scheme is found based on a saddle-point state of the t-J model. In the one-dimensional (1D) case, such a saddle-point reproduces the correct asymptotic correlations at the strong-coupling fixed point of the model. In the two-dimensional (2D) case, the transverse gauge field confining spinon and holon is shown to be gapped at finite doping so that a spin-charge deconfinement is obtained for its first time in 2D. The gap in the gauge fluctuation disappears at half-filling limit, where a long-range antiferromagnetic order is recovered at zero temperature and spinons become confined. The most interesting features of spin dynamics and transport are exhibited at finite doping where exotic residual couplings between spin and charge degrees of freedom lead to systematic anomalies with regard to a Fermi-liquid system. In spin dynamics, a commensurate antiferromagnetic fluctuation with a small, doping-dependent energy scale is found, which is characterized in momentum space by a Gaussian peak at (\ensuremath{\pi}/a,\ensuremath{\pi}/a) with a doping-dependent width (\ensuremath{\propto} \ensuremath{\surd}\ensuremath{\delta} , \ensuremath{\delta} is the doping concentration). This commensurate magnetic fluctuation contributes a non-Korringa behavior for the NMR spin-lattice relaxation rate. There also exists a characteristic temperature scale below thich a pseudogap behavior appears in the spin dynamics. Furthermore, an incommensurate magnetic fluctuation is also obtained at a finite energy regime. In the transport, a strong-range phase intereference leads to an effective holon Lagrangian which can give rise to a series of interesting phenomena including linear-T resistivity and a
T2 Hall angle. We discuss the striking similarities of these theoretical features with those found in the high-
Tc cuprates and give a consistent picture for the latter. Electronic properties like Fermi surface and superconducting pairing in this framework are also discussed.