Composite Polarons in Ferromagnetic Narrow-band Metallic Manganese Oxides

Abstract

A new mechanism is proposed to explain the colossal magnetoresistance and related phenomena. Moving electrons accompanied by Jahn-Teller phonon and spin-wave clouds may form composite polarons in ferromagnetic narrow-band manganites. The ground-state and finite-temperature properties of such composite polarons are studied in the present paper. By using a variational method, it is shown that the energy of the system at zero temperature decreases with the formation of composite polaron; the energy spectrum and effective mass of the composite polaron at finite temperature is found to be strongly renormalized by the temperature and the magnetic field. It is suggested that the composite polaron contribute significantly to the transport and the thermodynamic properties in ferromagnetic narrow-band metallic manganese oxides.