  Path-integral approach to the tight-binding polaron is extended to multiple
optical phonon modes of arbitrary dispersion and polarization. The non-linear
lattice effects are neglected. Only one electron band is considered. The
electron-phonon interaction is of the density-displacement type, but can be of
arbitrary spatial range and shape. Feynman's analytical integration of ion
trajectories is performed by transforming the electron-ion forces to the basis
in which the phonon dynamical matrix is diagonal. The resulting polaron action
is derived for the periodic and shifted boundary conditions in imaginary time.
The former can be used for calculating polaron thermodynamics while the latter
for the polaron mass and spectrum. The developed formalism is the analytical
basis for numerical analysis of such models by path-integral Monte Carlo
methods.
