Camelback-shaped band reconciles heavy-electron behavior with weak electronic Coulomb correlations in superconducting TlNi2Se2

Combining photoemission spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and first-principles calculations, we characterize superconducting TlNi2Se2 as a material with weak electronic Coulomb correlations leading to a bandwidth renormalization of 1.4. We identify a camelback-shaped band, whose energetic position strongly depends on the selenium height. While this feature is universal in transition metal pnictides, in TlNi2Se2 it lies in the immediate vicinity of the Fermi level, giving rise to a pronounced van Hove singularity. The resulting heavy band mass resolves the apparent puzzle of a large normal-state Sommerfeld coefficient [H. Wang et al., Phys. Rev. Lett 111, 207001 (2013)] in this weakly correlated compound.