A Landau-Pekar variational theory is employed to study the multidimensional free-optical-polaron problem in the strong-coupling regime. The ground-state energy, the effective mass, and the average number of virtual phonons around the electron are obtained in harmonic-oscillator and hydrogenic approximations. It is shown that no simple dimensional scaling relations exist in the hydrogenic approximation.

• Received 13 September 1989

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.41.1668