We present exact diagonalization and momentum average approximation (MA) results for the single-polaron properties of a one-dimensional two-band model with phonon-modulated hopping. At strong electron-phonon coupling, we find a sharp transition in which the polaron ground state momentum jumps discontinuously from $k=\ensuremath{\pi}$ to $k=0$. The nature and origin of this transition is investigated and compared to that of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, where a sharp but smooth transition was previously reported. We argue that such discontinuous transitions are a consequence of the multiband nature of the model, and are unlikely to be observed in one-band models. We also show that MA describes qualitatively and even quantitatively accurately this polaron and its transition. Given its computationally efficient generalization to higher dimensions, MA thus promises to allow for accurate studies of electron-phonon coupling in multiband models in higher dimensions.
We present exact diagonalization and momentum average approximation (MA) results for the single-polaron properties of a one-dimensional two-band model with phonon-modulated hopping. At strong electron-phonon coupling, we find a sharp transition in which the polaron ground state momentum jumps discontinuously from k=\ensuremathπ to k=0. The nature and origin of this transition is investigated and compared to that of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, where a sharp but smooth transition was previously reported. We argue that such discontinuous transitions are a consequence of the multiband nature of the model, and are unlikely to be observed in one-band models. We also show that MA describes qualitatively and even quantitatively accurately this polaron and its transition. Given its computationally efficient generalization to higher dimensions, MA thus promises to allow for accurate studies of electron-phonon coupling in multiband models in higher dimensions.
We study a single polaron in the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model using four different techniques (three numerical and one analytical). Polarons show a smooth crossover from weak to strong coupling, as a function of the electron-phonon coupling strength λ, in all models where this coupling depends only on phonon momentum q. In the SSH model the coupling also depends on the electron momentum k; we find it has a sharp transition, at a critical coupling strength λ(c), between states with zero and nonzero momentum of the ground state. All other properties of the polaron are also singular at λ=λ(c). This result is representative of all polarons with coupling depending on k and q, and will have important experimental consequences (e.g., in angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and conductivity experiments).
Employing a largely unbiased variational exact diagonalization technique, we analyze the consequences of longer-ranged electron hopping and electron-phonon interaction on polaron formation in one dimension. Having at our disposal the accurate ground-state energy and wave function, we calculate and discuss various physical quantities, such as the renormalized band structure, effective mass, wave-function renormalization factor, phonon dressing, and Drude weight, characterizing the properties of the polaronic quasiparticle. We demonstrate that the electron-phonon coupling affects the relative strength of the nearest neighbor (NN) and next nearest neighbor (NNN) hopping processes in a dynamic way. Most notably we observe that the minimum of the polaron band, occurring at a finite momentum for large negative ratio between NN and NNN transfer, jumps to zero momentum as the electron-phonon coupling exceeds a critical one, thereby causing a rather sharp polaron transition in the one-dimensional extended Holstein model. The signatures of this transition are seen in the effective mass and polaron mobility, and therefore should be easily detectable by transport measurements.
Polarons with different types of electron-phonon coupling have fundamentally different properties. When the dominant interaction is between the electron density and lattice displacement, the momentum of the ground state does not change and the polaron gets exponentially heavy at strong coupling. In contrast, one-dimensional Peierls/Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (PSSH) polarons with interaction originating from displacement-modulated hopping feature a shift of the ground-state momentum to finite values and moderate values of effective mass as coupling is increased [D. J. J. Marchand et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 266605 (2010)]. Based on Diagrammatic Monte Carlo method, we investigate whether unusual properties of PSSH polarons depend on the type of the displacement-modulated hopping and to what degree they survive in higher dimension. We study two different PSSH models: with bosonic degrees of freedom residing on sites (model A) and bonds (model B) of the two-dimensional square lattice. For model A, we find that in both adiabatic and intermediate regimes, the momentum of the ground state experiences a continuous transition from zero to a finite value as a function of coupling strength. The transition is driven by quadratic instability of the dispersion function, implying that effective mass diverges at the critical point, and then decreases in an anisotropic fashion with increasing coupling. Unexpectedly, for model B, the momentum of the ground state always stays at zero and the effective mass increases monotonously with coupling. The increase is far from exponential and tends to level off at strong interaction, resulting in relatively light polarons. Having light polarons in the strong coupling regime is crucial for the bipolaron mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity [J. Sous, M. Chakraborty, R. V. Krems, and M. Berciu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 247001 (2018).]
Nondiagonal couplings to a bosonic bath completely change polaronic dynamics, from the usual diagonally coupled paradigm of smoothly varying properties. We study, using analytic and numerical methods, a model having both diagonal Holstein and nondiagonal Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) couplings. The critical coupling found previously in the pure SSH model, at which the k=0 effective mass diverges, now becomes a transition line in the coupling constant plane---the form of the line depends on the adiabaticity parameter. Detailed results are given for the quasiparticle and ground-state properties, over a wide range of couplings and adiabaticity ratios. The new paradigm involves a destabilization, at the transition line, of the simple Holstein polaron to one with a finite ground-state momentum, but with everywhere a continuously evolving band shape. No ``self-trapping transition'' exists in any of these models. The physics may be understood entirely in terms of competition between different hopping terms in a simple renormalized effective band theory. The possibility of further transitions is suggested by the results.
We investigate the effects of coupling to multiple-phonon modes on the properties of a Holstein polaron. To this end, we generalize the Momentum Average approximations MA (0) and MA (1) to deal with multiple-phonon modes. As for a single-phonon mode, these approximations are found to be numerically very efficient. They become exact for very weak or very strong couplings, and are highly accurate in the intermediate regimes, e.g. the spectral weights obey exactly the first six, respectively eight, sum rules. Our results show that the effect on ground-state properties is cumulative in nature. As a result, if the effective coupling to one mode is much larger than to all the others, this mode effectively determines the ground-state properties. However, even very weak coupling to a second phonon mode has important non-perturbational effects on the higher-energy spectrum, in particular on the dispersion and the phonon statistics of the polaron band. This has important consequences on the analysis and interpretation of data for real materials.
Many condensed matter problems involve a particle coupled to its environment. The polaron, originally introduced to describe electrons in a polarizable medium, describes a particle coupled to a bosonic field. The Holstein polaron model, although simple, including only optical Einstein phonons and an interaction that couples them to the electron density, captures almost all of the standard polaronic properties. We herein investigate polarons that differ significantly from this behaviour. We study a model with phonon-modulated hopping, and find a radically different behaviour at strong couplings. We report a sharp transition, not a crossover, with a diverging effective mass at the critical coupling. We also look at a model with acoustic phonons, away from the perturbative limit, and again discover unusual polaron properties. Our work relies on the Bold Diagrammatic Monte Carlo (BDMC) method, which samples Feynman diagrammatic expansions efficiently, even those with weak sign problems. Proposed by Prokof'ev and Svistunov, it is extended to lattice polarons for the first time here. We also use the Momentum Average (MA) approximation, an analytical method proposed by Berciu, and find an excellent agreement with the BDMC results. A novel MA approximation able to treat dispersive phonons is also presented, along with a new exact solution for finite systems, inspired by the same formalism.