Intermittent polaron dynamics: Born-Oppenheimer out of equilibrium

TL;DR

This paper investigates the non-equilibrium behavior of a molecular system with strong electron-phonon interactions, revealing intermittent switching and noise phenomena through a non-perturbative, adiabatic approach.

Contribution

It introduces a non-perturbative method to analyze phonon dynamics in strongly coupled electron-phonon systems out of equilibrium, highlighting intermittent switching behavior.

Findings

Identification of bistable oscillator states

Observation of effective random telegraph noise

Demonstration of non-perturbative treatment in adiabatic regime

Abstract

We consider the non-equilibrium dynamics of a molecular level interacting with local phonon modes in the case of a strong polaronic shift which prevents a perturbative treatment of the problem. Instead, we find that in an adiabatic regime when the electronic states react faster than the phonon modes it is possible to provide a fully non-perturbative treatment of the phonon dynamics including random noise and dissipation. The result shows intermittent switching between bistable states of the oscillator with an effective random telegraph noise.