The motion of polarons, which serve as charge carriers in conjugated polymers, is of fundamental importance for understanding transport properties of organic optoelectronic devices. We investigate the dynamics of a charged polaron in the presence of both electron-phonon and electron-electron interactions under the influence of an external electric field, which is modeled by the one-dimensional tight-binding Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model supplemented with a Hubbard on-site repulsion term. For this many-body dynamical evolution problem, we develop an adaptive time-dependent density matrix renormalization group ($t$-DMRG) method in combination with a Newtonian equation of motion for atomic displacements. Our results show that the velocity of the polaron is suppressed by the on-site Coulomb interaction $U$. The polaron moves with a supersonic velocity, about four times the sound velocity at the small $U$ limit, and approaches the sound velocity at the large $U$ limit. Furthermore, the dependence of the polaron velocity and the polaron effective mass on the lattice structures are discussed.

• Received 7 March 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.78.035209