We study the ultraviolet problem for models of a finite-dimensional quantum mechanical system linearly coupled to a bosonic quantum field, such as the (many-)spin boson model or its rotating-wave approximation. If the state change of the system upon emission or absorption of a boson is either given by a normal matrix or by a 2-nilpotent one, which is the case for the previously named examples, we prove an optimal renormalization result. We complement it, by proving the norm resolvent convergence of appropriately regularized models to the renormalized one. Our method consists of a dressing transformation argument in the normal case and an appropriate interior boundary condition for the 2-nilpotent case.
We study the ultraviolet problem for models of a finite-dimensional quantum mechanical system linearly coupled to a bosonic quantum field, such as the (many-)spin boson model or its rotating-wave approximation. If the state change of the system upon emission or absorption of a boson is either given by a normal matrix or by a 2-nilpotent one, which is the case for the previously named examples, we prove an optimal renormalization result. We complement it, by proving the norm resolvent convergence of appropriately regularized models to the renormalized one. Our method consists of a dressing transformation argument in the normal case and an appropriate interior boundary condition for the 2-nilpotent case.
We study the time evolution of the Nelson model in a mean-field limit in which [Formula: see text] nonrelativistic bosons weakly couple (with respect to the particle number) to a positive or zero mass quantized scalar field. Our main result is the derivation of the Bogoliubov dynamics and higher-order corrections. More precisely, we prove the convergence of the approximate wave function to the many-body wave function in norm, with a convergence rate proportional to the number of corrections taken into account in the approximation. We prove an analogous result for the unitary propagator. As an application, we derive a simple system of partial differential equations describing the time evolution of the first- and second-order approximations to the one-particle reduced density matrices of the particles and the quantum field, respectively.
These lecture notes originate from a one-semester course on the mathematical foundations of second quantization, first given at the Department of Physics of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in the Winter Semester 2025/26 to a mixed audience of physics and mathematics students. Their guiding thread is a class of physical models: spin-boson models, describing a two-level system coupled to a boson field. After summarizing the necessary background on unbounded operators, up to the Kato-Rellich and KLMN theorems, and developing direct sums and tensor products of Hilbert spaces and of unbounded operators, we treat single-mode boson fields, constructing the ladder and number operators and characterizing their domains, before moving to Fock spaces, second quantization, bosonic and fermionic annihilation and creation operators, and the canonical (anti)commutation relations. Throughout, spin-boson models provide both the motivation and the test bench for the formalism: we rigorously establish their self-adjointness, solve the pure dephasing and Jaynes-Cummings models explicitly, deriving their spectra and the qubit channels they induce, show how their multimode counterparts display irreversible decoherence and decay, and, in an appendix, prove the rotating-wave approximation for the quantum Rabi model with an explicit error bound. Finally, we use the KLMN theorem to construct spin-boson models with non-normalizable form factors, and briefly discuss stronger ultraviolet divergences and the need for renormalization. Exercises with full solutions are included.
We propose a density matrix renormalization group approach to tackle a two-state system coupled to a bosonic bath with continuous spectrum. In this approach, the optimized phonon scheme is applied to several hundred phonon modes that are linearly divided among the spectra. Although density matrix renormalization group cannot resolve very small energy scales, the delocalized-localized transition points of the two-state system are extracted by the extrapolation of the flow diagram results. The phase diagram is compared to the numerical renormalization group results and shows a good agreement in both Ohmic and sub-Ohmic cases.
We establish an approximate equivalence between a generalised quantum Rabi model and its nth order counterparts, where spinboson interactions are nonlinear as they comprise a simultaneous exchange of n bosonic excitations. Although there exists no unitary transformation between these models, we demonstrate their equivalence to a good approximation in a wide range of parameters. This shows that nonlinear spin-boson couplings, i.e., nth order quantum Rabi models, are accessible to quantum systems with only linear coupling between boson and spin modes by simply adding spin rotations and after an appropriate transformation. Furthermore, our result prompts novel approximate analytical solutions to the dynamics of the quantum Rabi model in the ultrastrong coupling regime improving previous approaches.
Abstract We establish an approximate equivalence between a generalised quantum Rabi model and its nth order counterparts, where spin-boson interactions are nonlinear as they comprise a simultaneous exchange of n bosonic excitations. Although there exists no unitary transformation between these models, we demonstrate their equivalence to a good approximation in a wide range of parameters. This shows that nonlinear spin-boson couplings, i.e., nth order quantum Rabi models, are accessible to quantum systems with only linear coupling between boson and spin modes by simply adding spin rotations and after an appropriate transformation. Furthermore, our result prompts novel approximate analytical solutions to the dynamics of the quantum Rabi model in the ultrastrong coupling regime improving previous approaches.
The theory of ultracold, dilute Bose gases is the subject of intensive studies, driven by new experimental applications, which also motivate the study of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in low dimensions. From the theoretical point of view there are few, quite special, models in which we are able to prove BEC for interacting bosons. With the aim of studying the condensation problem I considered a simplified model for a three and two dimensional system of bosons interacting with a repulsive short range potential, obtained by introducing an ultraviolet momentum cutoff. I proved that the interacting theory is well defined at all orders in terms of one (in three dimensions) or two (in two dimensions) effective parameters, related to the intensity of the interaction. Moreover the correlations do not exhibit anomalous dimensions, i.e. the model is in the same universality class of the exactly soluble Bogoliubov model. The result is obtained by using Rigorous Renormalization Group techniques and implementing local Ward identities (WI), which reduce the number of independent running couplings, this fact being crucial for the control of the two dimensional theory, where the effective interactions are relevant. Since the ultraviolet momentum cutoff breaks local gauge invariance, the corrections to the formal WI have been considered.