A new variational calculation for N-dimensional polarons in the strong-coupling limit

A novel variational approach is presented for the calculation of the ground-state energy of the polaron in arbitrary N dimensions in the strong-coupling limit. By using the phonon coherent state to represent the wavefunction of phonons, a self-consistent integro-differential equation for the electron wavefunction is derived. The calculated results of the ground-state energy for N = 1, 2 and 3 agree well with the best results in the literature. It is also found that, for arbitrary N, the present results are less than the Feynman path integral ones by small percentages. It is proposed that this approach should be universal for systems involving polarons in the strong-coupling regime.