Regularization of ultraviolet divergence for a particle interacting with a scalar quantum field

Abstract

When a nonrelativistic particle interacts with a scalar quantum field, the standard perturbation theory leads to a dependence of the energy of its ground state on an undefined parameter---"momentum cutoff"---due to the ultraviolet divergence. We show that the use of nonasymptotic states of the system results in a calculation scheme in which all observable quantities remain finite and continuously depend on the coupling constant without any additional parameters. It is furthermore demonstrated that the divergence of traditional perturbation series is caused by the energy being a function with a logarithmic singularity for small values of the coupling constant.