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Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 067004 (2007) [4 pages]

Universal High Energy Anomaly in the Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectra of High Temperature Superconductors: Possible Evidence of Spinon and Holon Branches

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J. Graf1,2, G.-H. Gweon3,4, K. McElroy1, S. Y. Zhou3, C. Jozwiak3, E. Rotenberg5, A. Bill3, T. Sasagawa6,7, H. Eisaki8, S. Uchida9, H. Takagi6,7,10, D.-H. Lee1,3, and A. Lanzara1,3,*
1Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
2Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, CH-1015, Lausanne, Switzerland
3Department of Physics, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
4Department of Physics, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA
5Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
6Department of Advanced Materials Science, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8561, Japan
7CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Saitama 332-0012, Japan
8AIST, 1-1-1 Central 2, Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8568, Japan
9Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Yayoi, 2-11-16 Bunkyoku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan
10RIKEN (The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research), Wako 351-0198, Japan

Received 25 May 2006; published 7 February 2007

A universal high energy anomaly in the single particle spectral function is reported in three different families of high temperature superconductors by using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. As we follow the dispersing peak of the spectral function from the Fermi energy to the valence band complex, we find dispersion anomalies marked by two distinctive high energy scales, E1≈0.38  eV and E2≈0.8  eV. E1 marks the energy above which the dispersion splits into two branches. One is a continuation of the near parabolic dispersion, albeit with reduced spectral weight, and reaches the bottom of the band at the Γ point at ≈0.5  eV. The other is given by a peak in the momentum space, nearly independent of energy between E1 and E2. Above E2, a bandlike dispersion reemerges. We conjecture that these two energies mark the disintegration of the low-energy quasiparticles into a spinon and holon branch in the high Tc cuprates.

© 2007 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.067004
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.067004
PACS:
74.72.−h, 74.25.Jb, 79.60.−i

*Electronic address: alanzara@lbl.gov

 
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