Evolution of the Fermi surface of d-wave superconductors in the presence of thermal phase fluctuations

One of the most puzzling aspects of the high T-c superconductors is the appearance of Fermi arcs in the normal state of the underdoped cuprate materials. These are loci of low energy excitations covering part of the Fermi surface that suddenly appear above T-c instead of the nodal quasiparticles. Based on a semiclassical theory, we argue that partial Fermi surfaces arise naturally in a d-wave superconductor that is destroyed by thermal phase fluctuations. Specifically, we show that the electron spectral function develops a square root singularity at low frequencies for wave vectors positioned on the bare Fermi surface. We predict a temperature dependence of the arc length that can partially account for the results of recent angle resolved photoemission experiments.