Polaron action for multimode dispersive phonon systems

Abstract

Path-integral approach to the tight-binding polaron is extended to multiple optical phonon modes of arbitrary dispersion and polarization. The non-linear 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.