Bilayer splitting in the electronic structure of heavily overdoped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ

The electronic structure of heavily overdoped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta is investigated by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The long-sought bilayer band splitting in this two-plane system is observed in both normal and superconducting states, which qualitatively agrees with the bilayer Hubbard model calculations. The maximum bilayer energy splitting is about 88 meV for the normal state feature, while it is only about 20 meV for the superconducting peak.