Polarons in spinless metals—a variational solution

Abstract We propose a simple variational solution for calculating one-particle spectral functions in lattice models of spinless metals with strong electron-phonon coupling. It is based on a generalization of the Momentum Average variational approximation for single polarons, combined with the assumption that the other fermions in the system are locked into an inert Fermi sea. We expect the method to be accurate for fermion addition spectral functions in metals with a small Fermi energy (nearly empty band), and for fermion removal spectral functions in metals with a large Fermi energy (nearly full band), provided that the characteristic phonon frequency is not too small. Both these regions are far from the region where the Migdal theorem holds, thus our results offer new insights into polaronic behavior in a largely unexplored part of the parameter space. Here, we show results for the Holstein coupling in one-dimension and present ways to gauge their accuracy, but ultimately this will need to be verified against numerical calculations. This variational method can be extended straightforwardly to higher dimensions and other forms of electron-phonon coupling.