A phenomenological theory of the pseudogap state

An ansatz is proposed for the coherent part of the single particle Green's function in a doped resonant valence bond (RVB) state by analogy with the form derived by Konik and coworkers for an array of 2-leg Hubbard ladders near half-filling. The parameters of the RVB state are taken from the renormalized mean field theory of Zhang and coworkers for underdoped cuprates. The ansatz shows good agreement with recent angle resolved photoemission on underdoped cuprates and resolves an apparent disagreement with the Luttinger sum rule.