Thermodynamic properties of Holstein polarons and the effects of disorder

TL;DR

This study investigates how disorder and temperature influence the properties of Holstein polarons using exact diagonalization on small models, revealing suppression of kinetic energy and smoothing of polaron crossover.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of disorder and temperature effects on polaron properties in small Holstein models, highlighting the transition from coherent to incoherent hopping.

Findings

Disorder suppresses kinetic energy and Drude weight.

Temperature has a similar effect to disorder on polaron properties.

Strong coupling leads to incoherent hopping dominating kinetic energy.

Abstract

The ground state and finite temperature properties of polarons are studied considering a two-site and a four-site Holstein model by exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian. The kinetic energy, Drude weight, correlation functions involving charge and lattice deformations, and the specific heat have been evaluated as a function of electron-phonon (e-ph) coupling strength and temperature. The effects of site diagonal disorder on the above properties have been investigated. The disorder is found to suppress the kinetic energy and the Drude weight, reduces the spatial extension of the polaron, and makes the large-to-small polaron crossover smoother. Increasing temperature also plays similar role. For strong coupling the kinetic energy arises mainly from the incoherent hopping processes owing to the motion of electrons within the polaron and is almost independent of the disorder strength. From the coherent and incoherent contributions to the kinetic energy, the temperature above which the incoherent part dominates is determined as a function of e-ph coupling strength.