  Evidence from NMR of a two-component spin system in cuprate high-$T_c$
superconductors is shown to be paralleled by similar evidence from the
electronic entropy so that a two-component quasiparticle fluid is implicated.
We propose that this two-component scenario is restricted to the optimal and
underdoped regimes and arises from the upper and lower branches of the
reconstructed energy-momentum dispersion proposed by Yang, Rice and Zhang (YRZ)
to describe the pseudogap. We calculate the spin susceptibility within the YRZ
formalism and show that the doping and temperature dependence reproduces the
experimental data for the cuprates.

Superconductivity