Properties of nonadiabatic quantum fluctuations of the strongly coupled electron-phonon systems

A new variational-ansatz of states of electrons and phonons was proposed on the basis of the Holstein model in strongly coupled electron-phonon systems for studying the influence of nonadiabatic phonon fluctuation, arising from the motion and density fluctuation of electrons, on the properties of ground state, uncertainty relation, stability of polarons, charge density wave (CDW) and phonon staggered ordering. The new ansatz represents the correlation among the displacement and squeezing states of phonons and polaron’s state of electrons as well as the squeezing-antisqueezing effect. The correlation and squeezing-antisqueezing effect result in the decrease of ground state energy, enhancement of stability of the systems, increase of binding energy of the polarons, weakening of the growing speed of polaron narrowing of the electron band, increase of the charge density wave order and suppression of the increased tendency of anomalous quantum fluctuation of the phonons in such a case, when compared with the uncorrelated case in the systems. The results obtained show that the ground state determined by the new state ansatz is most stable, thus the new ansatz describing the properties of the coupled electron phonon systems is very relevant and available, especially in strongly coupled and largely squeezed cases. Supported by the National “973” Project of China (Grant No. 2007CB6103)     

Singular effect of disorder on electronic transport in strongly coupled electron-phonon systems

We solve the disordered Holstein model in three dimensions considering the phonon variables to be classical. After mapping out the phases of the "clean" strong coupling problem, we focus on the effect of disorder at strong electron-phonon (EP) coupling. The presence of even weak disorder (i) enormously enhances the resistivity (rho) at T=0, simultaneously suppressing the density of states at the Fermi level, (ii) suppresses the temperature dependent increase of rho, and (iii) leads to a regime with drho/dT<0. We locate the origin of these anomalies in the disorder induced tendency towards polaron formation, and the associated suppression in effective carrier density and mobility. These results, explicitly at "metallic" density, are of direct relevance to disordered EP materials such as covalent semiconductors, the manganites, and to anomalous transport in the A-15 compounds.     

Apparent electron-phonon interaction in strongly correlated systems

We study the interaction of electrons with phonons in strongly correlated solids, having high-T(c) cuprates in mind. Using sum rules, we show that the apparent strength of this interaction strongly depends on the property studied. If the solid has a small fraction (doping) delta of charge carriers, the influence of the interaction on the phonon self-energy is reduced by a factor delta, while there is no corresponding reduction of the coupling seen in the electron self-energy. This supports the interpretation of recent photoemission experiments, assuming a strong coupling to phonons.     

Bosonization of coupled electron-phonon systems

We calculate the single-particle Green’s function of electrons that are coupled to acoustic phonons by means of higher dimensional bosonization. This non-perturbative method is not based on the assumption that the electronic system is a Fermi liquid. For isotropic threedimensional phonons we find that the long-range part of the Coulomb interaction cannot destabilize the Fermi liquid state, although for strong electron-phonon coupling the quasi-particle residue is small. We also show that Luttinger liquid behavior in three dimensions can be due to quasi-one-dimensional anisotropy in the electronic band structure or in the phonon frequencies.     

Spin-Hall conductivity in electron-phonon coupled systems

We derive the ac spin-Hall conductivity sigmasH(omega) of two-dimensional spin-orbit coupled systems interacting with dispersionless phonons of frequency omega0. For the linear Rashba model, we show that the electron-phonon contribution to the spin-vertex corrections breaks the universality of sigmasH(omega) at low frequencies and provides a nontrivial renormalization of the interband resonance. On the contrary, in a generalized Rashba model for which the spin-vertex contributions are absent, the coupling to the phonons enters only through the self-energy, leaving the low-frequency behavior of sigmasH(omega) unaffected by the electron-phonon interaction.     

Electron correlations and quantum lattice vibrations in strongly coupled electron-phonon systems: A variational slave boson approach

We investigate the ground-state properties of the two-dimensional Hubbard model with an additional Holstein-type electron-phonon coupling on a square lattice. The effects of quantum lattice vibrations on the strongly correlated electronic system are treated by means of a variational squeezed-polaron wave function proposed by Zheng, where the possibility of static (frozen) phonon-staggered ordering is taken into account. Adapting the Kotliar-Ruckenstein slave boson approach to the effective electronic Hamiltonian, which is obtained in the vacuum state of the transformed phonon subsystem, our theory is evaluated within a two-sublattice saddle-point approximation at arbitrary band-filling over a wide range of electron-electron and electron-phonon interaction strengths. We determine the order parameters for long-range charge and/or spin ordered states from the self-consistency conditions for the auxilary boson fields, including an optimization procedure with respect to the variational displacement, polaron and squeezing parameters. In order to characterize the crossover from the adiabatic (=0) to the nonadiabatic (=) regime, the frequency dependencies of these quantities are studied in detail. In the predominant charge (spin) ordered phases the static Peierls dimerization (magnetic order) is strongly reduced with increasing . As the central result we present the slave boson ground-state phase diagram of the Holstein-Hubbard model for finite phonon frequencies.     

Irreversibility in strongly coupled systems

A Boltzmann H-functional is derived in the so called physical representation introduced by Prigogine et al. It is proved that at equilibrium it contains the potential contributions to the specific entropy of the moderately dense gas. We shall discuss its validity in the linear domain of irreversible processes.     

Two-Dimensional spin-echo multiple-quantum transitions in strongly coupled spin systems. Calculation of spectra

A general method for computation of two-dimensional spin-echo multiple-quantum spectra of strongly coupled spin systems is presented. It has been demonstrated that the 180° pulse can severely modify the multiple-quantum spectra of strongly coupled spins and explicit spectral details are given for the spin systems of types AB, ABX, and AB₂. In addition to the modified frequencies and additional transitions, it is found that such spectra possess additional frequency symmetry with respect to the center of each multiple-quantum order, even though the multiple-quantum spectrum without the 180° pulse may not be symmetric. The ABX spin system is treated in detail and the behavior of the homonuclear and heteronuclear multiple-quantum transitions in the presence of selective or nonselective 180° pulses is discussed. It has been demonstrated that strong coupling allows transfer of magnetization from abundant spins to a coupled rare spin even in the absence of excitation pulses on abundant spins. The amplitudes of various coherences created by selective and nonselective pulses and the nature of spin-echo zero-quantum transitions of strongly coupled spins are discussed in appendices.     

Polaronic behavior of undoped high-T(c) cuprate superconductors from angle-resolved photoemission spectra

We present angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) data on undoped La2CuO4, indicating polaronic coupling between bosons and charge carriers. Using a shell model, we calculate the electron-phonon coupling and find that it is strong enough to give self-trapped polarons. We develop an efficient method for calculating ARPES spectra in undoped systems. Using the calculated couplings, we find the width of the phonon sideband in good agreement with experiment. We analyze reasons for the observed dependence of the width on the binding energy.     

Polarization effects in the photoemission spectra of trigonal tellurium

Strong and unequivocal polarization effects are observed on the photoemission spectra of vacuum-cleaved, $\text{(10}\text{1}\text{0)}$ Tellurium. Calculations of the energy distribution curves of the photoelectrons have been performed based on pseudopotential band structure and wave functions. The results correlate with the observations and allow for the interpretation of the measured EDC in terms of bulk properties and surface effects.     

Kinetic characterization of strongly coupled systems

We propose a simple method to determine the local coupling strength Gamma experimentally, by linking the individual particle dynamics with the local density and crystal structure of a 2D plasma crystal. By measuring particle trajectories with high spatial and temporal resolution we obtain the first maps of Gamma and temperature at individual particle resolution. We employ numerical simulations to test this new method, and discuss the implications to characterize strongly coupled systems.     

Polaronic quasiparticles in a strongly correlated electron band

We show that a strongly renormalized band of polaronic quasiparticle excitations is induced at the Fermi level of an interacting many-electron system on increasing the coupling of the electrons to local phonons. We give results for the local density of states at zero temperature both for the electrons and phonons. The polaronic quasiparticles satisfy Luttinger's theorem for all regimes considered, and their dispersion shows a kink similar to that observed experimentally in copper oxides. Our calculations are based on the dynamical mean field theory and the numerical renormalization group for the hole-doped Holstein-Hubbard model and large on-site repulsion.     

Statistical energy analysis of strongly coupled systems

This paper examines the fundamental equations of the branch of linear oscillatory dynamics commonly referred to as Statistical Energy Analysis, with particular reference to the problem of two multi-modal sub-systems, strongly coupled at a single point.     

Non-stationary effects in the coupled quantum dots influenced by the electron-phonon interaction

We analyzed time evolution of the localized charge in the system of two interacting single level quantum dots coupled with the continuous spectrum states in the presence of electron-phonon interaction. We demonstrated that electron-phonon interaction leads to an increase in localized charge relaxation rate. We also found that several time scales with different relaxation rates appear in the system in the case of non-resonant tunneling between the dots. We revealed the formation of oscillations in the filling numbers time evolution caused by the emission and adsorption processes of phonons.