  We present a Green's function based treatment of the effects of
electron-phonon coupling on transport through a molecular quantum dot in the
quantum limit. Thereby we combine an incomplete variational Lang-Firsov
approach with a perturbative calculation of the electron-phonon self energy in
the framework of generalised Matsubara Green functions and a Landauer-type
transport description. Calculating the ground-state energy, the dot
single-particle spectral function and the linear conductance at finite carrier
density, we study the low-temperature transport properties of the vibrating
quantum dot sandwiched between metallic leads in the whole electron-phonon
coupling strength regime. We discuss corrections to the concept of an
anti-adiabatic dot polaron and show how a deformable quantum dot can act as a
molecular switch.
