  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 results of recent angle resolved
photo emission (ARPES) experiments.
