Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy of band tails in lightly doped cuprates

TL;DR

This paper investigates how band tails in lightly doped cuprates influence photoemission spectra, explaining phenomena like Fermi arcs and waterfall anomalies through disorder effects in strongly correlated materials.

Contribution

It introduces a modified ab initio band structure approach that incorporates band-tailing effects to better understand photoemission features in doped cuprates.

Findings

Band tails explain sharp quasi-particle peaks.

Disorder-localized states cause Fermi arcs.

Matrix-element effects lead to waterfall anomalies.

Abstract

We amend ab initio strongly-correlated band structures by taking into account the band-tailing phenomenon in doped charge-transfer Mott-Hubbard insulators. We show that the photoemission from band tails accounts for sharp "quasi-particle" peaks, rapid loss of their intensities in some directions of the Brillouin zone ("Fermi-arcs") and high-energy "waterfall" anomalies as a consequence of matrix-element effects of disorder-localised states in the charge-transfer gap of doped cuprates.