A polaron is a quasiparticle used in condensed matter physics to understand the interactions between electrons and atoms in a solid material. The polaron concept was proposed by Lev Landau in 1933 and Solomon Pekar in 1946 to describe an electron moving in a dielectric crystal where the atoms displace from their equilibrium positions to effectively screen the charge of an electron, known as a phonon cloud. This lowers the electron mobility and increases the electron's effective mass.

The general concept of a polaron has been extended to describe other interactions between the electrons and ions in metals that result in a bound state, or a lowering of energy compared to the non-interacting system. Major theoretical work has focused on solving Fröhlich and Holstein Hamiltonians. This is still an active field of research to find exact numerical solutions to the case of one or two electrons in a large crystal lattice, and to study the case of many interacting electrons.

Experimentally, polarons are important to the understanding of a wide variety of materials. The electron mobility in semiconductors can be greatly decreased by the formation of polarons. Organic semiconductors are also sensitive to polaronic effects, which is particularly relevant in the design of organic solar cells that effectively transport charge. Polarons are also important for interpreting the optical conductivity of these types of materials.

The polaron, a fermionic quasiparticle, should not be confused with the polariton, a bosonic quasiparticle analogous to a hybridized state between a photon and an optical phonon.

The energy spectrum of an electron moving in a periodical potential of a rigid crystal lattice is called the Bloch spectrum, which consists of allowed bands and forbidden bands. An electron with energy inside an allowed band moves as a free electron but has an effective mass that differs from the electron mass in vacuum. However, a crystal lattice is deformable and displacements of atoms (ions) from their equilibrium positions are described in terms of phonons. Electrons interact with these displacements, and this interaction is known as electron-phonon coupling. One possible scenario was proposed in the seminal 1933 paper by Lev Landau, which includes the production of a lattice defect such as an F-center and a trapping of the electron by this defect. A different scenario was proposed by Solomon Pekar that envisions dressing the electron with lattice polarization (a cloud of virtual polar phonons). Such an electron with the accompanying deformation moves freely across the crystal, but with increased effective mass. Pekar coined for this charge carrier the term polaron.

Landau and Pekar constructed the basis of polaron theory. A charge placed in a polarizable medium will be screened. Dielectric theory describes the phenomenon by the induction of a polarization around the charge carrier. The induced polarization will follow the charge carrier when it is moving through the medium. The carrier together with the induced polarization is considered as one entity, which is called a polaron (see Fig. 1).

While polaron theory was originally developed for electrons, there is no fundamental reason why it could not be any other charged particle interacting with phonons. Indeed, other charged particles such as (electron) holes and ions generally follow the polaron theory. For example, the proton polaron was identified experimentally in 2017 and on ceramic electrolytes after its existence was hypothesized.

Usually, in covalent semiconductors the coupling of electrons with lattice deformation is weak and polarons do not form. In polar semiconductors the electrostatic interaction with induced polarization is strong and polarons are formed at low temperature, provided that their concentration is not large and the screening is not efficient. Another class of materials in which polarons are observed is molecular crystals, where the interaction with molecular vibrations may be strong. In the case of polar semiconductors, the interaction with polar phonons is described by the Fröhlich Hamiltonian. On the other hand, the interaction of electrons with molecular phonons is described by the Holstein Hamiltonian. Usually, the models describing polarons may be divided into two classes. The first class represents continuum models where the discreteness of the crystal lattice is neglected. In that case, polarons are weakly coupled or strongly coupled depending on whether the polaron binding energy is small or large compared to the phonon frequency. The second class of systems commonly considered are lattice models of polarons. In this case, there may be small or large polarons, depending on the relative size of the polaron radius to the lattice constant a.