Bipolarons bound by repulsive phonon-mediated interactions

Abstract: When dressed particles (polarons) exchange quantum phonons, the resulting interactions are generally attractive. If the particles have hard-core statistics and the coupling to phonons is through the kinetic energy terms, phonon-mediated interactions are repulsive. Here, we show that such repulsive phonon-mediated interactions bind dressed particles into bipolarons with unique properties. These bipolaron states appear in the gap between phonon excitations, above the two-polaron continuum. While thermodynamically unstable, the bipolaron is protected by energy and momentum conservation and represents a novel quasiparticle with a large dispersion and a negative effective mass near zero momentum. We discuss possible experimental implementation of the conditions for the formation of such repulsively bound bipolarons.