Ground state description of bound polarons in parabolic quantum wires

The Feynman-Haken variational path integral theory is, for the first time, generalized to calculate the ground-state energy of an electron coupled sim ultaneously to a Coulomb potential and to a longitudinal-optical (LO) phono n field in parabolic quantum wires. It is shown that the polaronic correcti on to the ground-state energy is more sensitive to the electron-phonon coup ling constant than the Coulomb binding parameter and monotonically stronger as the effective wire radius decreases. We apply our calculations to sever al semiconductor quantum wires and find that the polaronic correction can b e considerably large.