Mott physics and the optical conductivity of electron-doped cuprates

Abstract

The doping- and temperature-dependent conductivity of electron-doped cuprates is analyzed. The variation of kinetic energy with doping is shown to imply that the materials are approximately as strongly correlated as the hole-doped materials. The optical spectrum is fit to a quasiparticle scattering model; while the model fits the optical data well, factor of 3--4 inconsistencies with photoemission data are found, implying the presence of a large and doping-dependent Landau parameter.