  We present a microscopic quantum theory of intersubband polarons,
quasiparticles originated from the coupling between intersubband transitions
and longitudinal optical phonons. To this aim we develop a second quantized
theory taking into account both the Fr\"ohlich interaction between phonons and
intersubband transitions and the Coulomb interaction between the intersubband
transitions themselves. Our results show that the coupling between the phonons
and the intersubband transitions is extremely intense, thanks both to the
collective nature of the intersubband excitations and to the natural tight
confinement of optical phonons. Not only the coupling is strong enough to
spectroscopically resolve the resonant splitting between the modes (strong
coupling regime), but it can become comparable to the bare frequency of the
excitations (ultrastrong coupling regime). We thus predict the possibility to
exploit intersubband polarons both for applied optoelectronic research, where a
precise control of the phonon resonances is needed, and also to observe
fundamental quantum vacuum physics, typical of the ultrastrong coupling regime.
