Phonon-Polaron Problem

Abstract

The method of moments is employed to determine the ground state of the phonon-polaron system. The trial function employed in this calculation is a bare-electron wave function. It appears that the method is convergent for this problem. Although the energy is in general a complicated function of the parameter and must be determined numerically, it is possible to formally construct a power series expansion for the energy about the unperturbed energy in powers of the coupling constant. The first term in this series has been determined and agrees with the result of conventional perturbation theory. The second term has not yet been evaluated to all orders but it appears that it will have the opposite sign from the corresponding term in perturbation theory. The second and higher terms in some orders of approximation are singular for small values of the cutoff.