Strong Electron-Phonon Interaction Effect in Quantum Dots

Strong-coupling polaron in a parabolic quantum dot is investigated by the Landau-Pekar variational treatment. The polaron binding energy and the average number of virtual phonons around the electron as a function of the effective confinement length of the quantum dot are obtained in Gaussian function approximation. It is shown that both the polaron binding energy and the average number of virtual phonons around the electron decrease with increasing the effective confinement length. The results indicate that the polaronic effects are more pronounced in quantum dots than those in two-dimensional and three-dimensional cases.