CC BY 4.0 UnportedPärschke, E.M.Wohlfeld, K.Foyevtsova, K.Van Den Brink, J.2020-07-202020-07-202017https://doi.org/10.34657/3690https://oa.tib.eu/renate/handle/123456789/5061The resemblance of crystallographic and magnetic structures of the quasi-two-dimensional iridates Ba2IrO4 and Sr2IrO4 to La2CuO4 points at an analogy to cuprate high-Tc superconductors, even if spin-orbit coupling is very strong in iridates. Here we examine this analogy for the motion of a charge (hole or electron) added to the antiferromagnetic ground state. We show that correlation effects render the hole and electron case in iridates very different. An added electron forms a spin polaron, similar to the cuprates, but the situation of a removed electron is far more complex. Many-body 5d 4 configurations form which can be singlet and triplet states of total angular momentum that strongly affect the hole motion. This not only has ramifications for the interpretation of (inverse-)photoemission experiments but also demonstrates that correlation physics renders electron- and hole-doped iridates fundamentally different.enghttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/530angular momentumasymmetrycrystallographyelectronsuperconductivitymotionphysicsArticle