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arXiv:cond-mat/0010386 · Physical Review Letters

Free Energy of the Fröhlich Polaron in Two and Three Dimensions

John Tatini Titantah, Carlo Pierleoni, Sergio Ciuchi

Published Oct 30, 2001• 26 citations
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Abstract

We present a novel path integral Monte Carlo scheme to solve the Fröhlich polaron model. At intermediate and strong electron-phonon couplings, the polaron self-trapping is properly taken into account at the level of an effective action obtained by a preaveraging procedure with a retarded trial action. We compute the free energy at several couplings and temperatures in three and two dimensions. Our results show that the accuracy of the Feynman variational upper bound for the free energy is always within a few percent. The method can be generalized to the N-polarons case.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.87.206406

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We present a novel path integral Monte Carlo scheme to solve the Fröhlich polaron model. At intermediate and strong electron-phonon couplings, the polaron self-trapping is properly taken into account at the level of an effective action obtained by a preaveraging procedure with a retarded trial action. We compute the free energy at several couplings and temperatures in three and two dimensions. Our results show that the accuracy of the Feynman variational upper bound for the free energy is always within a few percent. The method can be generalized to the N-polarons case.
New results for the free energy of a polaron in a strong magnetic field are presented. The method used here is the extended version of Feynman's pathintegral formalism in which the most general quadratic form containing an infinite number of variational parameters is employed to simulate the variational trial action. A set of nonlinear integral equations is established to determine the upper bound for the free energy in the entire range of electron-phonon coupling constants, temperatures and magnetic fields. Analytical solutions are provided for some limiting cases of interest, and are compared critically with existing calculations of the ground-state energy at zero temperature. The free energy thus obtained is exact to the lowest order in the coupling constant and provides the good interpolation up to the strong coupling regime.
We present results for the solution of the large polaron Fr\"ohlich Hamiltonian in 3 dimensions (3D) and 2 dimensions (2D) obtained via the diagrammatic Monte Carlo (DMC) method. Our implementation is based on the approach by Mishchenko [A. S. Mishchenko et al., Phys. Rev. B 62, 6317 (2000)]. Polaron ground state energies and effective polaron masses are successfully benchmarked with data obtained using Feynman's path integral formalism. By comparing 3D and 2D data, we verify the analytically exact scaling relations for energies and effective masses from $3\mathrm{D}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}2\mathrm{D}$, which provides a stringent test for the quality of DMC predictions. The accuracy of our results is further proven by providing values for the exactly known coefficients in weak- and strong-coupling expansions. Moreover, we compute polaron dispersion curves which are validated with analytically known lower and upper limits in the small-coupling regime and verify the first-order expansion results for larger couplings, thus disproving previous critiques on the apparent incompatibility of DMC with analytical results and furnishing useful reference for a wide range of coupling strengths.
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.
The polaron path integral introduced by Feynman is generalized to the case of an electron moving in d space dimensions. A scheme of systematic calculations of the obtained path integral is developed to estimate the ground-state energy of the polaron in the same way for different values of the electron-phonon coupling constant \ensuremath{\alpha}. The leading-order term in this approach yields an upper bound to the polaron self-energy and improves Feynman's variational estimates for d=2 and d=3. A scaling relation between polaron self-energies for different space dimensions is obtained for this term. The next correction to this estimation is calculated by numerical integration for d=2 and d=3.
Feynman path-integral techniques are used to study the large bipolaron system. A new trial action is introduced, which takes into account a nonzero average distance between the electrons. With this trial action, variational expressions are derived for the free energy for arbitrary electron-phonon interactions and spatial dimensions. For large interelectronic repulsions (twice) the Feynman upper bound for a single polaron is reobtained. Therefore it is possible to discuss the single-polaron--bipolaron transition within the same physical picture for both bipolarons and single polarons. Numerical results are presented for the case of LO-phonon interaction and a Coulombic repulsion between the electrons. For this system a scaling relation between the free energies in two (2D) and three dimensions (3D) is obtained. Bipolaron formation is only possible above a critical value for the coupling constant ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}_{\mathit{c}}$, which is lower in two than in three dimensions (in 2D: ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}_{\mathit{c}}$\ensuremath{\approxeq}2.9 and in 3D: ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}_{\mathit{c}}$\ensuremath{\approxeq}6.8). This indicates more favorable conditions for bipolaron formation in two dimensions, which might be of relevance for the bipolaron model of high-Tc{\mathit{T}}_{\mathit{c}}Tc​ superconductivity. The single-polaron--bipolaron transition behaves much like a first-order phase transition.
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.