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arXiv:0905.1379 · Physical Review B

Surface polaron formation in the Holstein model

Reza Nourafkan, Massimo Capone, N. Nafari

Published Oct 23, 2009• 11 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The effect of a solid-vacuum interface on the properties of a strongly coupled electron-phonon system is analyzed using dynamical mean-field theory to solve the Holstein model in a semi-infinite cubic lattice. Polaron formation is found to occur more easily, i.e., for a weaker electron-phonon coupling, on the surface than in the bulk. On the other hand, the metal-insulator transition associated with the binding of polarons takes place at a unique critical strength in the bulk and at the surface.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.80.155130

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The effect of a solid-vacuum interface on the properties of a strongly coupled electron-phonon system is analyzed using dynamical mean-field theory to solve the Holstein model in a semi-infinite cubic lattice. Polaron formation is found to occur more easily, i.e., for a weaker electron-phonon coupling, on the surface than in the bulk. On the other hand, the metal-insulator transition associated with the binding of polarons takes place at a unique critical strength in the bulk and at the surface.
The Holstein Hubbard and Holstein t-J models are studied for a wide range of phonon frequencies, electron-electron, and electron-phonon interaction strengths on finite lattices with up to ten sites by means of direct Lanczos diagonalization. Previously the necessary truncation of the phononic Hilbert space caused serious limitations to either very small systems (four or even two sites) or to weak electron-phonon coupling, in particular in the adiabatic regime. Using parallel computers we were able to investigate the transition from ``large'' to ``small'' polarons in detail. By resolving the low-lying eigenstates of the Hamiltonian and by calculating the spectral function, we can identify a polaron band in the strong-coupling case, whose dispersion deviates from the free-particle dispersion at low and intermediate phonon frequencies. For two electrons (holes) we establish the existence of bipolaronic states and discuss the formation of a bipolaron band. For the two-dimensional Holstein t-J model, we demonstrate that the formation of hole polarons is favored by strong Coulomb correlations. Analyzing hole-hole correlation functions, we find that hole binding is enhanced as a dynamical effect of the electron-phonon interaction. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
The formation of a finite-density polaronic state is analyzed in the context of the Holstein model using the dynamical mean-field theory. The spinless and spinful fermion cases are compared to disentangle the polaron crossover from the bipolaron formation. The exact solution of dynamical mean-field theory is compared with weak-coupling perturbation theory, noncrossing (Migdal), and vertex correction approximations. We show that polaron formation is not associated with a metal-insulator transition, which is instead due to bipolaron formation.
The evolution of the properties of a finite density electronic system as a function of the electron-phonon coupling is investigated in the Holstein model using the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) that becomes exact in infinite dimensions. We compare the spinless fermion case, in which only isolated polarons can be formed, with the spinful model in which the polarons can bind and form bipolarons. In the latter case, the bipolaronic binding occurs within DMFT as a metal-insulator transition. In the adiabatic regime in which the phonon energy is small with respect to the electron hopping we compare numerically exact DMFT results with an analytical scheme inspired by the Born-Oppenheimer procedure. Within the latter approach, a truncation of the phononic Hilbert space leads to a mapping of the original model onto an Anderson spin-fermion model. In the anti-adiabatic regime (where the phonon energy exceeds the electronic scales) the standard treatment based on Lang-Firsov canonical transformation allows one to map the original model on to an attractive Hubbard model in the spinful case. The separate analysis of the two regimes supports the numerical evidence that the presence of well-defined polaronic lattice displacements is not necessarily associated to a metal-insulator transition, which is instead due to pairing between the carriers. The finite-dimensionality effects neglected in DMFT may lead to a finite conductivity in the bipolaronic state which is, however, not always associated with polaronic distortions. At the polaron crossover the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is shown to break down due to the entanglement of the electron-phonon state.
We investigate polaron formation in a many-electron system in the presence of a local repulsion sufficiently strong to prevent local-bipolaron formation. Specifically, we consider a Hubbard-Holstein model of interacting electrons coupled to dispersionless phonons of frequency ω 0 . Numerically solving the model in a small one-dimensional cluster, we find that in the nearly adiabatic case ω 0 < t , the necessary and sufficient condition for the polaronic regime to occur is that the energy gain in the atomic ( i.e. , extremely localized) regime ε pol overcomes the energy of the purely electronic system ε el . In the antiadiabatic case, ω 0 > t , polaron formation is instead driven by the condition of a large ionic displacement g / ω 0 < 1 ( g being the electron-phonon coupling). Dynamical properties of the model in the weak and moderately strong coupling regimes are also analyzed.
The formation of a polaron quasiparticle from a bare electron is studied in the framework of the Holstein model of electron-phonon coupling. Using Schrödinger's formalism, we calculate the time evolution of the distribution of the electron and phonon density, lattice deformation, and the electron-phonon (el-ph) correlation functions in real space. The quantum dynamical nature of the phonons is preserved. The polaron formation time is related to the dephasing time of the continuum of unbound phonon excited states in the spectral function, which depends on the phonon frequency and the el-ph coupling strength. As the el-ph coupling increases, qualitative changes in polaron formation occur when the one-phonon polaron bound state forms. In the adiabatic regime, we find that a potential barrier between the quasi-free and heavy polaron states exists in both 2D and 3D, which is crucial for polaron formation dynamics. We compare to recent experiments.