Enhanced binding through coupling to a quantum field (Q5956814)

An electron in the non-relativistic atom coupled to the quantized radiation field is considered. The coupling is described by the non-relativistic Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian \(H\) in the dipole approximation. The typical situation is that the ground state of the Hamiltonian without coupling exists (the ordinary Schrödinger atom) and one is interested in whether this ground state persists when the coupling to the radiation field is included. In contrast, it is assumed in the paper that Hamiltonian \(H\) has no ground state for the constant of coupling \(\alpha=0\). This will be the case for a sufficiently shallow potential. The main result of the paper is that the non-binding potential become binding at a sufficiently strong coupling. It is proven that, under suitable restrictions on the external potential, there exists a critical constant \(\alpha_*\geq 0\) such that the Hamiltonian has a unique ground state for arbitrary \(|\alpha|>\alpha_*\). An explicit lower bound \(\alpha_c\) for the \(\alpha_*\) is given. The proofs are based on combination of a Bogoliubov transformation and a momentum lattice approximation.