  In this paper, we present a high resolution angle resolved photoemission
spectroscopy (ARPES) study of the electronic properties of graphite. We found
that the nature of the low energy excitations in graphite is particularly
sensitive to interlayer coupling as well as lattice disorder. As a consequence
of the interlayer coupling, we observed for the first time the splitting of the
$\pi$ bands by $\approx$ 0.7 eV near the Brillouin zone corner K. At low
binding energy, we observed signatures of massless Dirac fermions with linear
dispersion (as in the case of graphene), coexisting with quasiparticles
characterized by parabolic dispersion and finite effective mass. We also report
the first ARPES signatures of electron-phonon interaction in graphite: a kink
in the dispersion and a sudden increase in the scattering rate. Moreover, the
lattice disorder strongly affects the low energy excitations, giving rise to
new localized states near the Fermi level. These results provide new insights
on the unusual nature of the electronic and transport properties of graphite.
