  After an extended introduction, the thesis considers the electronic
properties of BSCCO and the recent progress in understanding the electronic
structure of this material. The main result of this part of the work is a model
of the Green's function that is later used for calculating the two-particle
excitation spectrum. Then, the matrix element effects in the photoemission
spectra of cuprates are discussed with a focus on the recently discovered
anomalous behavior of the ARPES spectra that partially originates from the
momentum-dependent photoemission matrix element. The momentum- and excitation
energy dependence of the anomalous high-energy dispersion, termed "waterfalls",
is covered in full detail. Finally, the work describes the relation of ARPES
with other experimental methods, such as INS spectroscopy. For the optimally
doped bilayer Bi-based cuprate, the renormalized two-particle correlation
function in the superconducting state is calculated from ARPES data within an
itinerant model based on the random phase approximation (RPA). Additionally,
two other applications of the same approach are briefly sketched: the relation
of ARPES to FT-STS, and the nesting properties of Fermi surfaces in
two-dimensional charge density wave compounds.
