How a Mott insulator develops into a weakly coupled metal upon doping is a central question to understanding various emergent correlated phenomena. To analyze this evolution and its connection to the high-$T_c$ cuprates, we study the single-particle spectrum for the doped Hubbard model using cluster perturbation theory on superclusters. Starting from extremely low doping, we identify a heavily renormalized quasiparticle dispersion that immediately develops across the Fermi level, and a weakening polaronic side band at higher binding energy. The quasiparticle spectral weight roughly grows at twice the rate of doping in the low doping regime, but this rate is halved at optimal doping. In the heavily doped regime, we find both strong electron-hole asymmetry and a persistent presence of Mott spectral features. Finally, we discuss the applicability of the single-band Hubbard model to describe the evolution of nodal spectra measured by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) on the single-layer cuprate La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$CuO$_4$ ($0 le x le 0.15$). This work benchmarks the predictive power of the Hubbard model for electronic properties of high-$T_c$ cuprates.
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