Ground and excited states of a bound polaron in a purely two-dimensional quantum well

Abstract

The bound-polaron problem in a purely two-dimensional quantum well is studied variationally for the entire range of the electron-phonon coupling constant and the Coulomb binding parameter. The ground-state energy, the average number of virtual phonons around the electron and the size of the polaron are calculated. A comparison made with the corresponding quantities for bulk crystals shows that the polaronic effects are more pronounced in two dimensions. The energies of the first two excited states are obtained and the phonon-induced Lamb shift corrections are computed for several polar materials.