High-energy anomaly in Nd_2-xCe_xCuO₄ investigated by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and quantum Monte Carlo simulations

Recent high-binding-energy angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) experiments reveal a change in band dispersion in the high-temperature superconducting cuprates (HTSCs) known as the high-energy anomaly (HEA). Despite considerable experimental and theoretical attention, the origin of the HEA remains a topic of some controversy. In this paper we present systematic and comprehensive experimental evidence on the origin of the HEA from ARPES measurements on the electron-doped HTSC material Nd_2-xCe _xCuO₄ at a number of dopings across the phase diagram and over the entire Brillouin zone (BZ). Comparing these new experimental findings to quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the single-band Hubbard model across the BZ and for various dopings demonstrates that this simple model qualitatively reproduces the key experimental features of the HEA and points to significant self-energy and band renormalization effects accompanying strong electron correlations as its origin rather than coupling to any one emergent bosonic mode, e.g., antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations. We conclude from comparison to this simple model that the HEA in these systems should be regarded as a crossover from a coherent quasiparticle band at low binding energies, emergent from the upper Hubbard band in electron-doped HTSCs due to doping and modified by subsequent strong band renormalization effects, to oxygen valence bands at higher binding energy that would be revealed in simulations explicitly incorporating these important orbital degrees of freedom.