Absence of embedded mass shells: Cerenkov radiation and quantum friction (Q630036)

This paper describes a model consisting of a nonrelativistic particle of mass \(m\) coupled to a quantized relativistic massless Bose field. The interaction is linear in the creation and annihilation operators. Since the system is invariant under space translations, its total momentum is conserved. When the particle momentum exceeds \(mc\), one expects that the particle will emit Cerenkov radiation. Moreover, in this spectral region one expects that the mass shell of the nonrelativistic particle disappears as soon as the interaction is switched on, i.e. the particle becomes unstable. Formulated differently, the mass shell dissolves in the continuum. More precisely, under the assumption that the fiber eigenvectors corresponding to the putative mass shell are differentiable functions of the total momentum, it can be shown that a mass shell can exist only at some positive distance away from from the unperturbed mass shell near the boundary of the energy-momentum spectrum.