The concept of polaron quasiparticles was first introduced in the pioneering papers by Landau and Feynman in the 1930s and 1940s. It describes the phenomenon of an external particle producing a bound state in an embedded medium. Since then, the study of polaron quasiparticles has been an active area of research in condensed matter physics, with a wide range of applications in magnetic phenomena and lattice deformation properties. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the polaron quasiparticle phenomenon, including its historical origins, theoretical developments, and current research. We also study the various applications of polaron quasiparticles in condensed matter physics, including in magnetic phenomena and lattice deformation properties. The review concludes with an outlook on future directions of research in this field. In particular, we study the motion of external embedded particles in a quasi-two-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensate confined by the quantum harmonic oscillator. We found that the dynamics of attracting particles with static Bose–Einstein condensate exhibit circular and precessional elliptic trajectories due to centripetal force. Polaron-forming embedded particles in the condensate lead to a strongly nonlinear trajectory of the polaron and dynamics of condensate depending on the initial parameters of the condensate and polaron.
The concept of polaron quasiparticles was first introduced in the pioneering papers by Landau and Feynman in the 1930s and 1940s. It describes the phenomenon of an external particle producing a bound state in an embedded medium. Since then, the study of polaron quasiparticles has been an active area of research in condensed matter physics, with a wide range of applications in magnetic phenomena and lattice deformation properties. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the polaron quasiparticle phenomenon, including its historical origins, theoretical developments, and current research. We also study the various applications of polaron quasiparticles in condensed matter physics, including in magnetic phenomena and lattice deformation properties. The review concludes with an outlook on future directions of research in this field. In particular, we study the motion of external embedded particles in a quasi-two-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensate confined by the quantum harmonic oscillator. We found that the dynamics of attracting particles with static Bose–Einstein condensate exhibit circular and precessional elliptic trajectories due to centripetal force. Polaron-forming embedded particles in the condensate lead to a strongly nonlinear trajectory of the polaron and dynamics of condensate depending on the initial parameters of the condensate and polaron.
Abstract We study various regimes of coherent coupled motion of a polaron and one-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensate in a harmonic potential. By using qualitative analysis, perturbation theory and direct numerical solution of the Gross–Pitaevskii equation, we show that the entire dynamics is strongly nonlinear and critically depends on the sign of the self-interaction in the condensate and the sign of the interaction between the polaron-forming embedded particle and the condensate. Strongly mutually related evolution of the condensate shape, its center of mass position, and polaron coordinate is studied for coupled nonlinear polaron-condensate oscillations and transmission/reflection of the polaron through/by the condensate.
Polarons are quasiparticles relevant across many fields in physics: from condensed matter to atomic physics. Here, we study the quasiparticle properties of two-dimensional strongly interacting Bose polarons in atomic Bose–Einstein condensates and polariton gases. Our studies are based on the non-self consistent T-matrix approximation adapted to these physical systems. For the atomic case, we study the spectral and quasiparticle properties of the polaron in the presence of a magnetic Feshbach resonance. We show the presence of two polaron branches: an attractive polaron, a low-lying state that appears as a well-defined quasiparticle for weak attractive interactions, and a repulsive polaron, a metastable state that becomes the dominant branch at weak repulsive interactions. In addition, we study a polaron arising from the dressing of a single itinerant electron by a quantum fluid of polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity. We demonstrate the persistence of the two polaron branches whose properties can be controlled over a wide range of parameters by tuning the cavity mode.
Quasiparticles and their interactions are a key part of our understanding of quantum many-body systems. Quantum simulation experiments with cold atoms have in recent years advanced our understanding of isolated quasiparticles, but so far they have provided limited information regarding their interactions and possible bound states. Here, we show how exploring mobile impurities immersed in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a two-dimensional lattice can address this problem. First, the spectral properties of individual impurities are examined, and in addition to the attractive and repulsive polarons known from continuum gases, we identify a new kind of quasiparticle stable for repulsive boson-impurity interactions. The spatial properties of polarons are calculated showing that there is an increased density of bosons at the site of the impurity both for repulsive and attractive interactions. We then derive an effective Schrödinger equation describing two polarons interacting via the exchange of density oscillations in the BEC, which takes into account strong impurity-boson two-body correlations. Using this, we show that the attractive nature of the effective interaction between two polarons combined with the two-dimensionality of the lattice leads to the formation of bound states - i.e. bipolarons. The wave functions of the bipolarons are examined showing that the ground state is symmetric under particle exchange and therefore relevant for bosonic impurities, whereas the first excited state is doubly degenerate and odd under particle exchange making it relevant for fermionic impurities. Our results show that quantum gas microscopy in optical lattices is a promising platform to explore the spatial properties of polarons as well as to finally observe the elusive bipolarons.
In this work we provide a comprehensive review of theoretical and experimental studies of the properties of polarons formed by mobile impurities strongly interacting with quantum many-body systems. We present a unified perspective on the universal concepts and theoretical techniques used to characterize polarons in two distinct platforms, ultracold atomic gases and atomically-thin transition metal dichalcogenides, which are linked by many deep parallels. We review polarons in both fermionic and bosonic environments, highlighting their similarities and differences including the intricate interplay between few- and many-body physics. Various kinds of polarons with long-range interactions or in magnetic backgrounds are discussed, and the theoretical and experimental progress towards understanding interactions between polarons is described. We outline how polaron physics, regarded as the low density limit of quantum mixtures, provides fundamental insights regarding the phase diagram of complex condensed matter systems. Furthermore, we describe how polarons may serve as quantum sensors of many-body physics in complex environments. Our work highlights the open problems, identifies new research directions and provides a comprehensive framework for this rapidly evolving research field.
An impurity particle interacting with a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) leads to the formation of a quasiparticle known as the Bose polaron. We investigate the properties of the two-dimensional Bose polaron, applying a variational ansatz that contains up to three Bogoliubov excitations of the BEC. Similar to its three-dimensional counterpart, we observe the existence of two quasiparticle branches, namely, the attractive and the repulsive polarons, at different coupling strengths. We find that their energies agree well with recent quantum Monte Carlo calculations. In particular, we observe that the inclusion of three excitations is crucial to capture the attractive polaron energy towards the regime of strong attraction, where the quasiparticle properties are dominated by few-body correlations. We also calculate the attractive polaron effective mass and residue, where we find significant differences between considering a weakly interacting Bose medium and taking the noninteracting limit, signaling enhanced impurity dressing by excitations in the latter case. By contrast, the spectral weight of the metastable repulsive polaron is largely insensitive to the interactions in the BEC and the number of Bogoliubov excitations. Our model may be experimentally realized in dilute atomic vapors and atomically thin semiconductors.
This article reviews recent theoretical developments in the ab initio study of polarons in materials. The polaron is an emergent quasiparticle that arises from the interaction between electrons and phonons in solids, and consists of an electron or a hole accompanied by a distortion of the crystal lattice. Recent advances in experiments, theory, and computation have made it possible to investigate these quasiparticles with unprecedented detail, reigniting the interest in this classic problem of condensed matter physics. Recent theoretical and computational advances include ab initio calculations of polaron spectral functions, wavefunctions, lattice distortions, and transport and optical properties. These developments provide new insight into polaron physics, but they have evolved somewhat independently from the earlier effective Hamiltonian approaches that laid the foundation of the field. This article aims to bridge these complementary perspectives by placing them within a single unified conceptual framework. To this end, we start by reviewing effective Hamiltonians of historical significance in polaron theory, ab initio techniques based on density functional theory, and many-body first-principles approaches to polarons. After this survey, we outline a general field-theoretic framework that bridges between these diverse approaches to polaron physics. For completeness, we also review recent progress in the study of exciton polarons and self-trapped excitons and their relations to polarons. Beyond the methodology, we discuss recent applications to several classes of materials that attracted attention in the context of polaron physics.