Stripe fluctuations, carriers, spectroscopies, transport, and BCS-BEC crossover in the high-Tc cuprates

The quasiparticles of the high-T_c cuprates are found to consist of: polaron-like ‘stripons’ carrying charge, and associated primarily with large-U orbitals in stripe-like inhomogeneities; ‘quasi-electrons’ (QE) carrying charge and spin, and associated with hybridized small-U and large-U orbitals; and ‘svivons’ carrying spin and lattice distortion. It is shown that this electronic structure leads to the systematic behavior of spectroscopic and transport properties of the cuprates. High-T_c pairing results from transitions between pair states of stripons and QEs through the exchange of svivons. The cuprates fall in the regime of crossover between BCS and preformed-pairs Bose-Einstein condensation behaviors.