Introduction

Despite the apparent simplicity of the formulation, the polaron problem has not yet been solved, and continues to attract much attention. It plays an important role in statistical mechanics and quantum field theory because it can be considered as the simplest example of a nonrelativistic quantum particle interacting with a quantum field. Therefore many sophisticated mathematical techniques have been tested for the first time using this problem as a model. A shining example of this is Feynman's functional integration method, which was applied first to the polaron problem, before becoming one of the main methods used in statistical mechanics and quantum field theory. Moreover, polaron theory is an expanding field of investigation in solid state physics because polarons are not only theoretical constructs but practically observable physical objects (see e.g. [6]).