Magnetic texture driven charge pairing in high-Tc superconducting cuprates

We propose a model for high-T-c cuprates that considers hole fractionalization into charge, associated to magnetic texture (skyrmion) excitations of the Cu spin background, and spin, represented by chargeless fermion excitations. The superconducting transition occurs when the effective potential between skyrmions allows for skyrmion bound states and this is expressed as an algebraic equation for T, as a function of doping. We compare our theoretical predictions to experimental data for La2-xSrxCuO4 and YBaCu3O6+x. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.