The mass shell of the Nelson model without cut-offs

The massless Nelson model describes non-relativistic, spinless quantum particles interacting with a relativistic, massless, scalar quantum field. The interaction is linear in the field. We analyze its one particle sector. First, we construct the renormalized mass shell of the non-relativistic particle for an arbitrarily small infrared cut-off that turns off the interaction with the low energy modes of the field. No ultraviolet cut-off is imposed. Second, we implement a suitable Bogolyubov transformation of the Hamiltonian in the infrared regime. This transformation depends on the total momentum of the system and is non-unitary as the infrared cut-off is removed. For the transformed Hamiltonian we construct the mass shell in the limit where both the ultraviolet and the infrared cut-off are removed. The limiting fibre Hamiltonians are obtained by convergence in the norm resolvent sense. Our approach is constructive and leads to explicit expansion formulae which are amenable to rigorously control the S-matrix elements. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved