While basic features of polarons were well recognized a long time ago and have been described in a number of review papers and textbooks, interest in the role of electron-phonon interactions and polaron dynamics in contemporary materials has recently gone through a vigorous revival. Electron-phonon interactions have been shown to be relevant in high-temperature superconductors and colossal magnetoresistance oxides, and transport through nanowires and quantum dots also often depends on vibronic displacements of ions. The continued interest in polarons extends beyond physical description of advanced materials. The field has been a testing ground for analytical, semi-analytical, and numerical techniques, such as path integrals, strong-coupling perturbation expansion, advanced variational, exact diagonalization, density-matrix renormalization group, dynamic mean-field, and quantum Monte Carlo techniques. Single and multi-polaron theories have offered a new insight in our understanding of high-temperature superconductivity, colossal magnetoresistance, and the correlated transport through molecular quantum dots. This book reviews some recent developments in the field of polarons, starting with the basics and covering a number of active directions of research.
Springer Series in
solid-state sciences
159
Springer Series in
solid-state sciences Series Editors: M. Cardona P. Fulde K. von Klitzing R. Merlin H.-J. Queisser H. St¨ormer The Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences consists of fundamental scientif ic books prepared by leading researchers in the f ield. They strive to communicate, in a systematic and comprehensive way, the basic principles as well as new developments in theoretical and experimental solid-state physics.
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Alexandre S. Alexandrov Jozef T. Devreese
Advances in Polaron Physics With 4 3 Figures
123
Professor Dr. Alexandre S. Alexandrov
Professor Dr. Jozef T. Devreese
Loughborough University Dept. Physics Loughborough United Kingdom LE11 3TU E-mail:
[email protected]
Universiteit Antwerpen Groenenborgerlaan 171 2020 Antwerpen Belgium E-mail:
[email protected]
Series Editors: Professor Dr., Dres. h. c. Manuel Cardona Professor Dr., Dres. h. c. Peter Fulde∗ Professor Dr., Dres. h. c. Klaus von Klitzing Professor Dr., Dres. h. c. Hans-Joachim Queisser Max-Planck-Institut f¨ur Festk¨orperforschung, Heisenbergstrasse 1, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany ∗ Max-Planck-Institut f¨ ur Physik komplexer Systeme, N¨othnitzer Strasse 38 01187 Dresden, Germany
Professor Dr. Roberto Merlin Department of Physics, University of Michigan 450 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1040, USA
Professor Dr. Horst St¨ormer Dept. Phys. and Dept. Appl. Physics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 and Bell Labs., Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA
Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences ISSN 0171-1873 ISBN 978-3-642-01895-4 e-ISBN 978-3-642-01896-1 DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-01896-1 Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009929173 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specif ically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microf ilm or in any other way, and storage i