Correlation effects, circular dichroism, and Fermi surfaces of bulk nickel from soft x-ray angle-resolved photoemission

Within this soft x-ray photoemission study we present a detailed experimental and theoretical view on the bulk-related electronic structure of ferromagnetic nickel. Our results resolve the long-standing issue of the Fermi surfaces of bulk Ni and thereby establish the validity of a local correlation picture for its electronic structure. We performed complementary theoretical and experimental soft x-ray angle-resolved photomission spectroscopy studies to determine the Fermi surfaces and correlation effects in the bulk states of Ni. The electronic structure, obtained from the local-spin density approximation with dynamical mean-field theory and one-step photoemission calculations including matrix elements, is based on a fully relativistic treatment using a complex and energy-dependent self-energy Σ(E). The experimental band dispersions, the circular dichroism in the spectral functions, and the experimentally extracted self-energy Σ(E) are in agreement with theoretical findings.