Simulation of angle-resolved photoemission spectra by approximating the final state by a plane wave: From graphene to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules

Highlights: • Computational study on angular dependent photoemission spectroscopy. • Graphene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules. • Plane wave final state approximation accounts for experimental findings. - Abstract: We present a computational study on the angular-resolved photoemission spectra (ARPES) from a number of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and graphene. Our theoretical approach is based on ab-initio density functional theory and the one-step model where we greatly simplify the evaluation of the matrix element by assuming a plane wave for the final state. Before comparing our ARPES simulations with available experimental data, we discuss how typical approximations for the exchange-correlation energy affect orbital energies. In particular, we show that by employing a hybrid functional, considerable improvement can be obtained over semi-local functionals in terms of band widths and relative energies of π and σ states. Our ARPES simulations for graphene show that the plane wave final state approximation provides indeed an excellent description when compared to experimental band maps and constant binding energy maps. Furthermore, our ARPES simulations for a number of polycyclic aromatic molecules from the oligo-acene, oligo-phenylene, phen-anthrene families as well as for disc-shaped molecules nicely illustrate the evolution of the electronic structure from molecules with increasing size towards graphene.