Role of electron-phonon interaction on quasiparticle dispersion in the strongly correlated cuprate superconductors

The role of the electron-phonon (el-ph) interaction in high-T-c cuprates is investigated theoretically by considering correlated electrons interacting with Holstein phonons within the two-dimensional single-band Hubbard model in the limit of large Coulomb interaction. It is shown that the electron-phonon interaction gives rise to a kink in the dispersion along the nodal direction and to a peak/dip/hump structure in the one-electron spectral weight whose dependence on temperature, isotope substitution, and doping is discussed in relation to recent photoemission experiments on the nodal quasiparticles in Bi2201 and LSCO. A comparison with these experiments shows that electron correlations play a crucial role in the determination of the kink position, size, and doping dependence. We also show that the "unusual" oxygen isotope shift in the real part of the self-energy, experimentally observed in the optimally doped Bi2212 samples, can be qualitatively explained within the framework that incorporates both strong electron correlations and the adiabatic electron-phonon interaction.