Unveiling the Orbital Texture of 1T-TiTe$_2$ using Intrinsic Linear Dichroism in Multidimensional Photoemission Spectroscopy

TL;DR

This study uses advanced photoemission spectroscopy to reveal the orbital texture in 1T-TiTe$_2$, demonstrating how orbital orientation influences intrinsic linear dichroism and advancing understanding of electronic wavefunctions in solids.

Contribution

It introduces a method to directly observe orbital texture in 1T-TiTe$_2$ using multidimensional photoemission spectroscopy combined with theoretical modeling.

Findings

Orbital texture causes strong intrinsic linear dichroism in photoemission.

Experimental results match theoretical models, confirming the link between orbital orientation and dichroism.

The approach enables probing electronic wavefunctions beyond simple band structure mapping.

Abstract

The momentum-dependent orbital character in crystalline solids, referred to as orbital texture, is of capital importance in the emergence of symmetry-broken collective phases such as charge density waves as well as superconducting and topological states of matter. By performing extreme ultraviolet multidimensional angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy for two different crystal orientations linked to each other by mirror symmetry, we isolate and identify the role of orbital texture in photoemission from the transition metal dichalcogenide 1T-TiTe$_2$. By comparing our experimental results with theoretical calculations based on both a quantitative one-step model of photoemission and an intuitive tight-binding model, we unambiguously demonstrate the link between the momentum-dependent orbital orientation and the emergence of strong intrinsic linear dichroism in the photoelectron angular distributions. Our results represent an important step towards going beyond band structure (eigenvalues) mapping and learn about electronic wavefunction and orbital texture of solids by exploiting matrix element effects in photoemission spectroscopy.