On Rayleigh scattering in non-relativistic quantum electrodynamics (Q2248865)

The authors study the long-time dynamics of non-relativistic particles minimally coupled to a quantized photon or phonon field, with a fixed ultraviolet cutoff. For initial bound states, i.e., states whose energy is part of the discrete spectrum of the Hamiltonian, it is shown that solutions of the Schrödinger equation exist and have a well-defined infinite time limit. It is then shown that asymptotic completeness holds, i.e., that this limit can be approximated arbitrarily well by a superposition of states with a fixed number of additional photons. The result is derived under the assumption that Fermi's Golden Rule holds for all eigenvalues of the particle Hamiltonian up to some fixed value in the discrete spectrum, including the energy of the initial state, and that the number of low-energy photons is bounded uniformly in time for an arbitrary set of initial states dense in the space of bounded states. These conditions are necessary because of the well-known infrared problem for massless photons, and are absent for the case of massive bosons such as phonons. The proof is based on the method of propagation observables and minimal photon escape velocity estimates, which are then used to show the existence of Deift- Simon wave operators. Using these operators, the late-time wave function is decomposed into a part which has the form required by asymptotic completeness and a part which vanishes in the late-time limit. A key technical ingredient is the use of a generalized Pauli-Fierz transform which gives a unitarily equivalent Hamiltonian that is better behaved in the infrared.