Physical properties of layered superconductors from angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES)

This thesis is devoted to studies of high temperature superconductors and related materials using the angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). Though there is no accepted theory of superconductivity, encompassing high-$T_{\\rm c}$ materials, there is enough evidence to believe that superconductivity can always be interpreted as stemming from pairing of electrons by interaction with bosons, and $T_{\\rm c}$ is determined by effectiveness of such a pairing. ARPES, owing to the possibility of recording energy- and momentum-resolved electronic spectrum, is a powerful probe of the normal-state electronic structure, which is an important prerequisite for the superconductivity, and implications of the electron pairing, such as emergence of the superconducting gap and finer features below $T_{\\rm c}$. Based on ARPES data one can quantify the electronic interactions by analysis of kinks in the dispersion curves, spectral line widths etc. In current work new methods of ARPES data analysis were developed and applied to the spectra taken from cuprate and iron-based high-$T_{\\rm c}$. The possibility to analyze the macroscopic response of solids in the normal state as well as in the superconducting and charge-density-wave phases basing on the experimentally measured renormalized band dispersion and anisotropic superconducting and charge-density-wave gap was shown. The thesis consists of five parts. Part 1 introduces the employed notions of electrons in solids and methods of their investigation. Part 2 describes the Voigt fitting procedure, allowed for purification of the spectra from resolution effects, and, consequently, for determination of the quasiparticle scattering rate with enhanced precision. In Part 3 the calculation of the temperature-dependent Hall coefficient in the charge-density-wave-bearing 2H-TaSe$_2$ from the band dispersion, measured in ARPES, is presented, and comparison to the independent magnetotransport measurements is shown. The extraction of the band dispersion of Ba$_{1-x}$K$_{x}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ and LiFeAs from ARPES data can be found in Part 4. Agreement with Hall effect measurements on the same samples is demonstrated. Part 5 introduces the extraction of the momentum-dependent superconducting gap in iron arsenides from fitting of ARPES spectra to Dynes function. The superfluid density was calculated from the band dispersion and the superconducting gap, measured in ARPES, and compared to the ones measured by different techniques