Coulomb scattering in the massless Nelson model I. Foundations of two-electron scattering

Abstract

We construct two-electron scattering states and verify their tensor product structure in the infrared-regular massless Nelson model. The proof follows the lines of Haag-Ruelle scattering theory: Scattering state approximants are defined with the help of two time-dependent renormalized creation operators of the electrons acting on the vacuum. They depend on ground state wave functions of the (single-electron) fiber Hamiltonians with infrared cut-off. Convergence of these approximants as $t\to \infty$ is shown with the help of Cook's method combined with a non-stationary phase argument. Removal of the infrared cut-off in the limit $t\to \infty$ requires sharp estimates on the derivatives of these ground state wave functions w.r.t. electron and photon momenta, with mild dependence on the infrared cut-off. These key estimates, which carry information about the localization of electrons in space, are obtained in a companion paper with the help of iterative analytic perturbation theory. Our results hold in the weak coupling regime.