We developed a path-integral quantum Monte Carlo-based methodology for calculation of polaron mobility in systems with electron-phonon interaction. Within the method, the current-current correlation function in both the imaginary and real time is calculated in a numerically exact way. The choice of basis for representation of the path integral enabled us to reduce the sign problem and perform real-time calculations for longer times. The DC polaron mobility was extracted by performing analytic continuation that makes use of both the real and imaginary-time data. The method was applied to the Holstein polaron model in one dimension. We obtained reliable results for the temperature dependence of the Holstein polaron mobility for interactions ranging from weak to strong and temperatures that are not too low.
We developed a path-integral quantum Monte Carlo-based methodology for calculation of polaron mobility in systems with electron-phonon interaction. Within the method, the current-current correlation function in both the imaginary and real time is calculated in a numerically exact way. The choice of basis for representation of the path integral enabled us to reduce the sign problem and perform real-time calculations for longer times. The DC polaron mobility was extracted by performing analytic continuation that makes use of both the real and imaginary-time data. The method was applied to the Holstein polaron model in one dimension. We obtained reliable results for the temperature dependence of the Holstein polaron mobility for interactions ranging from weak to strong and temperatures that are not too low.
The Holstein model is a benchmark model of systems with electron-phonon interaction. However, its electrical transport properties are not yet fully understood. In this work, we performed numerically exact calculations of the imaginary-time current-current correlation function of the Holstein Hamiltonian for a broad range of model parameters. These calculations were performed using a path-integral-based quantum Monte Carlo method. We compared these results with the results obtained under the assumption of conventional band transport, small polaron hopping, and polaron band transport. From this comparison, we identified the regions in parameter space where each of these transport regimes is valid. In some cases when an imaginary-time comparison of current-current correlation functions could not give conclusive results, we complemented it with real-time comparisons or a comparison with the literature data on numerically exact dc mobilities. Overall, we found that the parameter space is almost completely covered by the three mentioned transport regimes.
The basic principles behind a path integral approach to the lattice polaron are reviewed. Analytical integration of phonons reduces the problem to one self-interacting imaginary-time path, which is then simulated by Metropolis Monte Carlo. Projection operators separate states of different symmetry, which provides access to various excited states. Shifted boundary conditions in imaginary time enable calculation of the polaron mass, spectrum and density of states. Other polaron characteristics accessible by the method include the polaron energy, number of excited phonons and isotope exponent on mass. Monte Carlo updates are formulated in continuous imaginary time on infinite lattices and as such provide statistically unbiased results without finite-size and finite time-step errors. Numerical data are presented for models with short-range and long-range electron?phonon interactions.
Abstract The polaron problem is a very old problem in condensed matter physics that dates back to the thirties, but still remains largely unsolved today, especially when electron–electron interaction is taken into consideration. The presence of both electron–electron and electron–phonon interactions in the problem invalidates most existing numerical methods, which are either computationally too expensive or simply intractable. The continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo (CTQMC) methods could tackle this problem, but they are only effective on the imaginary-time axis. In this work, we present a method based on tensor networks and the path integral formalism to solve polaron impurity problems. As both the electron and phonon baths can be integrated out via the Feynman–Vernon influence functional in the path integral formalism, our method is free of bath discretization error. It can also flexibly work on imaginary time, Keldysh contour, and L-shaped Kadanoff contour. In addition, our method can naturally resolve several long-existing challenges: (i) non-diagonal hybridization function; (ii) measuring multi-time correlations beyond single-particle Green’s functions. We demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of our method with extensive numerical examples against analytic solutions, exact diagonalization, and CTQMC. We also perform full-fledged real-time calculations that have never been done before to our knowledge, which could serve as a benchmarking baseline for future method developments.
We present the numerically exact ground-state energy, effective mass, and isotope exponents of a one-dimensional lattice polaron, valid for any range of electron-phonon interaction, applying a continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) technique in a wide range of coupling strength and adiabatic ratio. The QMC method is free from any systematic finite-size and finite-time-step errors. We compare our numerically exact results with analytical weak-coupling theory and with the strong-coupling $1∕\ensuremath{\lambda}$ expansion. We show that the exact results agree well with the canonical Fr\"ohlich and Holstein-Lang-Firsov theories in the weak and strong coupling limits, respectively, for any range of interaction. We find a strong dependence of the polaron dynamics on the range of interaction. An increased range of interaction has a similar effect to an increased (less adiabatic) phonon frequency: specifically, a reduction in the effective mass.
The path-integral approach to the tight-binding polaron is extended to multiple optical phonon modes of arbitrary dispersion and polarization. The nonlinear lattice effects are neglected. Only one electron band is considered. The electron-phonon interaction is of the density-displacement type, but can be of arbitrary spatial range and shape. Feynman's analytical integration of ion trajectories is performed by transforming the electron-ion forces to the basis in which the phonon dynamical matrix is diagonal. The resulting polaron action is derived for the periodic and shifted boundary conditions in imaginary time. The former can be used for calculating polaron thermodynamics while the latter for the polaron mass and spectrum. The developed formalism is the analytical basis for numerical analysis of such models by path-integral Monte Carlo methods.
Numerically "exact" methods addressing the dynamics of coupled electron-phonon systems have been intensively developed. Nevertheless, the corresponding results for the electron mobility μdc are scarce, even for the one-dimensional (1d) Holstein model. Building on our recent progress on single-particle properties, here we develop the momentum-space hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) method to evaluate real-time two-particle correlation functions of the 1d Holstein model at a finite temperature. We compute numerically "exact" dynamics of the current-current correlation function up to real times sufficiently long to capture the electron's diffusive motion and provide reliable results for μdc in a wide range of model parameters. In contrast to the smooth ballistic-to-diffusive crossover in the weak-coupling regime, we observe a temporally limited slow-down of the electron on intermediate time scales already in the intermediate-coupling regime, which translates to a finite-frequency peak in the optical response. Our momentum-space formulation lowers the numerical effort with respect to existing HEOM-method implementations, while we remove the numerical instabilities inherent to the undamped-mode HEOM by devising an appropriate hierarchy closing scheme. Still, our HEOM remains unstable at too low temperatures, for too strong electron-phonon coupling, and for too fast phonons.