Relaxation Dynamics of the Holstein Polaron

Keeping the full quantum nature of the problem, we compute the relaxation time of the Holstein polaron in one dimension after it was driven far from the equilibrium by a strong oscillatory pulse. Just after the pulse, the polaron's kinetic energy increases and subsequently exhibits a relaxation-type decrease with simultaneous emission of phonons. In the weak coupling regime, partial tunneling of the electron from the polaron self-potential is observed. The inverse relaxation time is for small values of electron-phonon coupling lambda linear with lambda, while it deviates downwards from the linear regime at lambda >= 0.1/omega(0). The imaginary part of the equilibrium self-energy shows good agreement with the inverse relaxation time obtained from nonequilibrium simulations.