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Physical review. B, Solid state

Polaron Mass. I. The Free Polaron

John T. Marshall, Benjamin U. Stewart

Published Nov 15, 1970• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

An approximate calculation is made of the polaron effective mass as defined by Fr\"ohlich. The approach taken is a variational one based on an extended version of H\"ohler's ansatz in which the trial state function employed is an exact eigenfunction of the total wave vector of the polaron. The effective mass obtained simulates the Feynman-Schultz results while the corresponding polaron self-energy is fairly accurate but inferior to the result of Feynman and Schultz.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.2.4001

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A Variational Calculation of the Polaron Self-Energy and Effective Mass.

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An approximate calculation is made of the polaron self-energy and effective mass as defined by Frohlich.The approach taken is a variational one based on an ex tended version of Hohler's ansatz in which the trial state function employed is an exact eigenfunction of the total wave vector of the polaron.The effective mass obtained simulates the Feynmann-Schultz result while the corresponding polaron self-energy is fairly accurate but inferior to the result of Feynman and Schultz.CONTENTS Chapters « -« T -| > £ ( l ^' (1'2) n in which n is the optical refractive index, k is the static dielectric constant, e is the electronic charge and 2 t\& is Plank's constant.The limit S->°° is to be taken with lim I = -~ S-*oo v 8tt d 3v .(1,3) A natural unit system is employed in which 2^=o)=2m=l.The first term in the Hamiltonian is the quantum mechanical operator corresponding to the kinetic energy of the electron.The second term represents the energy of the polarization field resulting from the long wave length longitudinal optical crystal modes in the absence of interaction with the electron.The last term represents the energy of interaction between the electron and the phonons.The name "polaron" has been given to the entity consisting of the Bloch conduction electron together with its accompanying nonradiative polarization field.Accordingly Frohlich defines the polaron self-energy, EQ (a), and the (ground-state) polaron effective mass, y(a), by the expansion EQ (a,ic) = Ec (a) + k 2/y(a) + 0(k4 ), (1,4)

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The free energy of an ideal polaron gas in a static magnetic field is calculated using Feynman's path-integral formalism. The trial action, used in Feynman's polaron theory, is extended to take into account the anisotropy of the effective electron-phonon interaction. This results in a free-energy expression with four variational parameters. According to Feynman's conjecture, the resulting free energy is an upper bound to the exact result. The approximate free energy is expected to provide accurate results for arbitrary electron-phonon coupling strength ($\ensuremath{\alpha}$), temperature ($T$), and magnetic field strength ($\mathcal{H}$). The free energy per polaron is evaluated for limiting values of $\ensuremath{\alpha}$, $T$, and $\mathcal{H}$.

Physical review. B, Condensed matter•Jun 15, 1982•94 citations
An approximate calculation is made of the polaron effective mass as defined by Fr"ohlich. The approach taken is a variational one based on an extended version of H"ohler's ansatz in which the trial state function employed is an exact eigenfunction of the total wave vector of the polaron. The effective mass obtained simulates the Feynman-Schultz results while the corresponding polaron self-energy is fairly accurate but inferior to the result of Feynman and Schultz.
An approximate calculation is made of the polaron self-energy and effective mass as defined by Frohlich.The approach taken is a variational one based on an ex tended version of Hohler's ansatz in which the trial state function employed is an exact eigenfunction of the total wave vector of the polaron.The effective mass obtained simulates the Feynmann-Schultz result while the corresponding polaron self-energy is fairly accurate but inferior to the result of Feynman and Schultz.CONTENTS Chapters « -« T -| > £ ( l ^' (1'2) n in which n is the optical refractive index, k is the static dielectric constant, e is the electronic charge and 2 t\& is Plank's constant.The limit S->°° is to be taken with lim I = -~ S-*oo v 8tt d 3v .(1,3) A natural unit system is employed in which 2^=o)=2m=l.The first term in the Hamiltonian is the quantum mechanical operator corresponding to the kinetic energy of the electron.The second term represents the energy of the polarization field resulting from the long wave length longitudinal optical crystal modes in the absence of interaction with the electron.The last term represents the energy of interaction between the electron and the phonons.The name "polaron" has been given to the entity consisting of the Bloch conduction electron together with its accompanying nonradiative polarization field.Accordingly Frohlich defines the polaron self-energy, EQ (a), and the (ground-state) polaron effective mass, y(a), by the expansion EQ (a,ic) = Ec (a) + k 2/y(a) + 0(k4 ), (1,4)
In the expansion of the ground-state energy of a polaron in a weak magnetic field, the zeroth-order term is the polaron self-energy, while the first-order term is inversely proportional to the polaron effective mass. The effective mass so obtained is exactly equivalent to the freepolaron effective mass as defined by Fr\"ohlich. This equivalence principle is used to approximate the polaron effective mass by employing an approximate expression for the ground-state energy of a polaron in a weak magnetic field obtained by applying Feynman's path-integral variational method. The resultant polaron effective mass is found to be higher than Feynman's result by less than 1%.
We have calculated the polaron effective mass m∗{m}^{*}m∗ by extending the variational ansatz of a previous paper, where, in the Lee-Low-Pines representation, pair correlations between wave vectors of virtually emitted phonons are taken into account. Our results suggest that (1) effective masses calculated by fourth-order perturbation theory lie below the true values but are quite accurate for $\ensuremath{\alpha}<~3$ and (2) the Feynman theory gives effective masses which are somewhat too high in the intermediate-coupling region. For $\ensuremath{\alpha}\stackrel{\ensuremath{\sim}}{<}4.5$ we propose the estimate $\frac{{m}^{*}}{m}=1+\frac{\ensuremath{\alpha}}{6}+0.02363{\ensuremath{\alpha}}^{2}+0.0014{\ensuremath{\alpha}}^{3}$.
In order to calculate the effective mass and free energy of a polaron at finite temperatures, Feynman's path-integral formalism is generalized in the following two points: (a) the most general quadratic form is used to fully optimize the partition function, and (b) the new definition of the effective mass is introduced such that the effective mass is determined from the acceleration rate against the fictitious driving force which is incorporated in the original Lagrangian. The use of (a) leads to a non-linear integral equation which determines the best trial form. This non-linear integral equation is solved analytically for the Fröhlich polaron model to obtain the explicit expressions for the effective mass and free energy at finite temperatures.
The polaron mass of a two-dimensional Fr\"ohlich polaron is calculated to second order in the coupling constant (\ensuremath{\alpha}) and is found to be equal to m∗{m}^{\mathrm{*}}m∗/mb{\mathrm{m}}_{\mathrm{b}}mb​=1+(\ensuremath{\pi}/8)\ensuremath{\alpha}+0.127 23${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}^{2}$, with mb{m}_{b}mb​ the band mass of the electron. In the strong-coupling limit we found the exact result m∗{m}^{\mathrm{*}}m∗/mb{m}_{b}mb​=0.733${\ensuremath{\alpha}}^{4}$. A comparison is made with the polaron mass as obtained from the Feynman polaron theory, and the validity of a scaling relation is discussed.
The free energy of an ideal polaron gas in a static magnetic field is calculated using Feynman's path-integral formalism. The trial action, used in Feynman's polaron theory, is extended to take into account the anisotropy of the effective electron-phonon interaction. This results in a free-energy expression with four variational parameters. According to Feynman's conjecture, the resulting free energy is an upper bound to the exact result. The approximate free energy is expected to provide accurate results for arbitrary electron-phonon coupling strength ($\ensuremath{\alpha}$), temperature (TTT), and magnetic field strength (H\mathcal{H}H). The free energy per polaron is evaluated for limiting values of $\ensuremath{\alpha}$, TTT, and H\mathcal{H}H.