High resolution photoemission experiments on copper oxide superconductors

The mechanism for achieving high transition temperatures (T c) in copper oxide superconductors and the nature of the mysterious "pseudogap" phase from which this phenomenon arises are two of the most pressing issues in solid state physics. High resolution angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), which can directly probe the momentum and energy dependence of the electronic structure of a crystal, is considered one of the foremost tools for unraveling these mysteries. In this thesis we present work on both the further development of the ARPES technique itself and the results of two experiments on the high temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta (BSCCO)---the drosophila of copper oxide superconductors---based upon these analytical and experimental advances. On the analytical side we have shown that the precision of any ARPES experiment can be radically enhanced by using the Lucy-Richardson method (LRM) of iterative deconvolution to remove the worst effects of experimental resolution broadening present in all ARPES spectra. On the experimental side we have constructed a deep ultraviolet laser system capable of increasing our data acquisition rate by more than an order of magnitude compared to what is possible using traditional synchrotron radiation sources at the same momentum and energy resolutions. Using the LRM, in conjunction with synchrotron radiation, spectroscopic evidence was found for the existence of incoherent Cooper pairs in underdoped BSCCO in the normal pseudogap state (above Tc). At the same time an asymmetry between the particle and hole states of BSCCO was found, implying that doped Mott insulators, of which BSCCO is a primordial example, are characterized by the presence of a Fermi-Luttinger surface, rather than a Fermi surface, as would be the case for a simple metal. This study provided the first spectroscopic evidence for either phenomenon. In our second experiment we were able to use the LRM on data acquired with the laser ARPES system to show the presence in optimally doped BSCCO, well below T c, of a previously unobserved electron-boson interaction. The momentum dependence of this interaction, which appears as a "kink" in ARPES spectra, shows that the responsible boson is an Einstein phonon. The ARPES data is well reproduced by a simple theoretical model based on these observations. After more than two decades of study this result represents the first unambiguous enumeration of an electron-boson interaction by ARPES in BSCCO. The identification of this interaction will require a theoretical reevaluation of the nature of several similar features long seen in BSCCO, the origins of which remain unknown and highly controversial to this day.