Temperature Dependence of Energy-band Width and Effective Mass for the Holstein Polaron
Dejun Li, Mi Xian-Wu
As ones know,the polaron is a quasiparticle formed by an electron and phonons.Due to Coulomb interaction,the electron will make the lattice deformation take place,meanwhile,the deformation potential(induced) by the lattice deformation will exert on the electron,the electron-phonon interaction influence doubtless on the state of motion of an electron,for example,the energy band and effective mass of an electron could change by the interaction,the electron can also be trapped by the deformable lattice,therefore,the research on the(polaron) is very important in understanding optical and transport properties of a solid. Studying electron-phonon interaction has been a main subject in condensed matter physics;in experiments,the influences of the temperature on the forbidden-band width of semiconductors have been observed very early,with the increase of the temperature,the forbidden-band width of most semiconductors will narrow,but a few will widen,these situations are closely relevant to the electron-phonon interaction.In particular,(recently),a large amount of experimental results,ranging from infrared spectroscopy to transport properties(involving) the colossal magnetoresistance and high-T_c superconductivity,has pointed out the importance of the electron-phonon interaction,which has renewed the interest in studying the models of the electron-phonon(coupled) system,especially,the Holstein polaron,for its relative simplicity,is the most considered model for the interaction of a single tight-binding electron coupled to phonons. In the past several decades,the Holstein poloron has been studied in detail in one-dimensional lattices,various theoretical methods,such as variational approaches,the Global-Local variational method,the(coherent)-state expansion method,have been developed to study features of the Holstein polaron including ground-state energy,polaron energy band,effective mass and so on.However,so far,the work considering the influences of the temperature on features of the Holstein polaron is little still. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the influences of the temperature on the energy-band width and the effective mass of the Holstein polaron by using the canonical transformation method.It is shown that,at certain coupling strength,the energy-band width of the Holstein polaron will narrow and the effective mass will augment with the increase of the temperature,in particular,when electron-phonon coupling strength is big enough,the energy-band width will become zero rapidly in small region of temperature,in fact,the situation is rapid transition of the polaron from the energy-band state to the self-trapping local state,this is an(interesting) result obtained in the paper.It is obvious that these features of the Holstein polaron are very useful in explaining optical and transport properties of a solid.
Chinese Journal of Luminescence•Jan 1, 2006•0 citations