Two-lifetime model for the cuprates revisited
Abstract
Several models of the strange-metal state of the cuprate superconductors postulate the existence of strong inelastic forward scattering of the electrons, but direct evidence of such scattering is missing. Here, we show that angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) provides a unique tool which can address this issue. We propose a two-lifetime phenomenological model of the superconducting state of the cuprates, and we show that it explains several salient low-energy features of the measured ARPES spectra. The model enables discrimination between forward- and large-angle scattering and, in addition, gives access to the magnitude of the gap function away from the Fermi surface.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.02097,
title = {Two-lifetime model for the cuprates revisited},
author = {František Herman and Lucia Gelenekyová and Hana Havranová and Richard Hlubina},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.02097},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Main text: 5 pages and 4 figures, Supplemental material: 11 pages and 13 figures