Optical conductivity of overdoped cuprates from ab initio out-of-plane impurity potentials

Dopant impurity potentials determined by ab-initio supercell DFT calculations are used to calculate the optical conductivity of overdoped LSCO and Tl-2201 in the superconducting and normal states. Vertex corrections are included, to account for the effect of forward scattering on two-particle properties. This approach was previously shown to provide good, semiquantitative agreement with measurements of superfluid density in LSCO. Here we compare calculations of conductivity with measurements of THz conductivity on LSCO using identical impurity, band, and correlation parameters, and find similarly good correspondence with experiment. In the process, we delineate the impact of the different disorder mechanisms on single-particle and transport relaxation processes. In particular, we reveal the critical role of apical oxygen vacancies in transport scattering and show that transport relaxation rates in LSCO are significantly reduced when apical oxygen vacancies are annealed out. These considerations are shown to be crucial for understanding the variability of experimental results on overdoped LSCO in samples of nominally identical doping but different types. Finally, we give predictions for Tl-2201 THz conductivity experiments.