ARPES in the cuprate superconductors -- a mean field study

Angle resolved photo-emission spectroscopy (ARPES) experiments have played a key role in disclosing information about the cuprates. Intriguing features observed by ARPES in hole underdoped materials include the development of spectral weight inside the Mott gap, the nodal dispersion ``kink'' and the Fermi arcs. We show that a new mean field approach to the $tt't''J$ model, which describes doped Mott insulators in terms of hole-like quasiparticles and spin-charge separated excitations, provides a framework to account for the observed evolution of the electron spectral function from the undoped insulator to the overdoped Fermi metal.