Bipolaron and N-polaron binding energies.

The binding of polarons, or its absence, is an old and subtle topic. Here we prove two things rigorously. First, the transition from many-body collapse to the existence of a thermodynamic limit for N polarons occurs precisely at U=2α, where U is the electronic Coulomb repulsion and α is the polaron coupling constant. Second, if U is large enough, there is no multipolaron binding of any kind. Considering the known fact that there is binding for some U>2α, these conclusions are not obvious and their proof has been an open problem for some time.