Thermal and quantum lattice fluctuations in Peierls chains

Abstract

The thermodynamic and spectral properties of electrons coupled to quantum phonons are studied within the spinless Holstein model. Using quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we obtain accurate results for the specific heat and the compressibility, covering the entire range of electron-phonon couplings and phonon frequencies. To this end, we derive an efficient estimator for the specific heat using the properties of the perturbation expansion. This allows us to quantitatively test the predictions of Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid theory as well as the widely used adiabatic approximation for low phonon frequencies. A comparison with the spectral functions of electrons and phonons reveals that the formation of polaron excitations as well as the renormalization of the phonon mode across the Peierls transition have a pronounced effect on the specific heat in the adiabatic regime.

12 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (14)

• Excitation spectra and correlation functions of quantum Su-Schrieffer-Heeger models
• Mean Field theory of the spin-Peierls transition
• Ground state properties of the Holstein model near the adiabatic limit
• Nature of ground states in one-dimensional electron-phonon Hubbard models at half-filling
• Dynamic charge correlations near the Peierls transition
• Density waves in strongly correlated quantum chains
• Phonon spectral function of the one-dimensional Holstein-Hubbard model
• Spectral functions of the spinless Holstein model
• Directed-Loop Quantum Monte Carlo Method for Retarded Interactions
• Dominant particle-hole contributions to the phonon dynamics in the spinless one-dimensional Holstein model
• Continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo for fermion-boson lattice models: Improved bosonic estimators and application to the Holstein model
• The spin-Peierls chain revisited
• Carrier-density effects in many-polaron systems
• Thermodynamics of a Spin-1/2 Chain Coupled to Einstein Phonons

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Comparative Study of State-of-the-Art Matrix-Product-State Methods for Lattice Models with Large Local Hilbert Spaces
• Competing Orders and Unconventional Criticality in the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Model
• Quantum Monte Carlo simulation of spin-boson models using wormhole updates
• Real-time evolution of static electron-phonon models in time-dependent electric fields
• Thermal and optical conductivity in the Holstein model at half filling and at finite temperature in the Luttinger-liquid and charge-density-wave regime
• Electronic Mechanism that Quenches Field-Driven Heating as Illustrated with the Static Holstein Model
• Grand-canonical Peierls theory for atomic wires on substrates