Thermodynamic fluctuations in the high-Tcperovskite superconductors

Abstract
The role of fluctuations in the breakdown of mean-field theory in the new high-Tc perovskite superconductors is analyzed. Both the breakdown of the classical critical exponents (the Ginzburg criterion) and the quantitative breakdown of mean-field theory (the Brout criterion) are discussed. It is found that for certain sets of observed parameters for these materials, a breakdown of mean-field theory is to be expected.