A Simple Bound on the Error of Perturbation Theory in Quantum Mechanics

Abstract

I provide a straightforward proof that a simple harmonic oscillator perturbed by an (almost) arbitrary positive interaction has a perturbative expansion for any finite-time Euclidian transition amplitude which obeys the following result: the difference of the sum of the first N terms of the series and the exact result is bounded in absolute value by the next term in the series. The proof makes no assumptions about either the strength of the interactions or the convergence of the perturbation series. I then argue that the result generalizes immediately to a much broader class of quantum mechanical systems, including bare perturbation theory in quantum field theory. The case of renormalized perturbation theory is more subtle and remains open, as does the generalization to energy levels and connected S-matrix elements.