Phenomenological description of the copper oxides as almost localized Fermi liquids

We demonstrate that a variety of normal-state properties of the cuprates are similar to what is observed in heavy-fermion metals, provided that the temperature or frequency are rescaled. This leads to a characteristic energy scale ${\mathit{T}}_{\mathrm{coh}}$≊150 K and suggests that the ‘‘non-Fermi-liquid-like’’ behavior of the cuprates is related to the high-temperature breakup of coherence of a Fermi-liquid ground state. We propose a concrete physical picture for future theories and give predictions which can be tested.