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# Accretion Flows in X-ray Binaries

## 1 Introduction

One of the key puzzles in X-ray astronomy is to understand accretion flows in a strong gravitational field. This applies to both Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and Quasars, where the accretion is onto a supermassive black hole, and to the stellar mass Galactic black holes (GBH) and even the neutron star systems. Neutron star radii are of order three Schwarzchild radii, i.e. the same as that for the last stable orbit of material around a black hole. Thus they have very similar gravitational potentials so should have very similar accretion flows, though of course with the major difference that neutron stars then have a solid surface, so can have a boundary layer and a stellar magnetic field.

The main premise throughout this paper is that progress in understanding accretion in any of these objects should give us some pointers to understanding accretion in all of them. Galactic sources are intrinsically less luminous, but a great deal closer than the AGN, so generally are much brighter. The variability timescales also scale with the mass of the central object so it is much easier to study changes in the accretion flow onto Galactic sources. Thus we can use the Galactic sources as a laboratory for understanding accretion processes, and then see how much of this can be transfered to AGN.

## 2 Instabilities in Accretion Flows

Accretion onto a black hole via an optically thick disk has been known for decades to produce rather robust spectral predictions (Shakura & Sunyaev 1973; hereafter SS). The emission should consist of a sum of quasi–blackbody spectra, peaking at a maximum temperature of $`0.6`$ keV for accretion rates around Eddington onto a $`10M_{}`$ GBH, or at $`0.3`$ keV for accretion rates at $`1`$ per cent of Eddington. The whole accretion disk structure is determined mainly by the luminosity (i.e. mass accretion rate) as a fraction of the Eddington luminosity, $`\dot{m}`$, and is only weakly dependent on the mass of the black hole.

However, these steady state accretion disk solutions are generically unstable. At low mass accretion rates then the point at which hydrogen makes the transition between being mostly neutral to mostly ionised gives a dramatic instability. When a part of the disk starts to reach temperatures at which the Wien photons can ionised hydrogen then these photons are absorbed. This energy no longer escape from the disk, so it heats up, which produces higher temperatures and more photons which can ionise hydrogen, so more absorbtion and still higher temperatures. The runaway heating only stops when hydrogen is mostly ionised.

If the temperature crosses the hydrogen ionisation instability point at any radius in the disk then the whole disk is unstable. This classic disk instability (DIM) is responsible for a huge variety of variability behaviour. In the neutron stars and black holes the DIM is made more complex by X–ray irradiation: the outburst is triggered by the DIM, then irradiation contributes to the ionisation of hydrogen, so controls the evolution of the disk, while it can also enhance the mass transfer from the companion star (e.g. the review by Lasota 2001).

There may also be a further instability at high mass accretion rates, where the pressure in the disk is dominated by radiation. If the heating rate scales with the total pressure, then this scales as $`T^4`$ where radiation pressure dominates. A small increase in temperature leads to a large increase in heating rate, and so to a bigger increase in temperature. The runaway heating only stabilises when the timescale for the radiation to diffuse out of the disk is longer than the accretion timescale for it to be swallowed by the black hole (optically thick advection: Abramowicz et al. 1988). The spectrum of these slim disks are slightly different to those of standard SS disks, as the energy generated in the innermost orbits is preferentially advected rather than radiated (Watarai & Mineshige 2002). At these high mass accretion rates the disk can also overheat, causing the inner disk to become strongly comptonised (Shakura & Sunyaev 1973; Beloborodov 1998).

However, there is much uncertainty about the disk structure at such high mass accretion rates. The association of the viscosity with the magnetic dynamo means that the viscous heating may scale only with the gas pressure, rather than the total pressure, which removes the radiation pressure instability (Stella & Rosner 1984). Even the advective cooling may be circumvented if the disk becomes clumpy, so that the disk material is not as efficient in trapping the radiation (Turner et al., 2002; Gammie 1998; Krolik 1998).

Figure 1a shows the equilibrium solutions (i.e. places where heating balances cooling) of an SS disk at a given radius and viscosity. The disk surface density, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }=\rho 𝑑z\tau `$, where $`\tau `$ is the optical depth of the disk, generally increases as the mass accretion rate increases, but the hydrogen ionisation and radiation pressure instabilities are so strong that the disk surface density actually decreases at these points. The dotted line shows where the disk behaviour becomes very uncertain.

## 3 Observations of Accretion Flows in Galactic Black Holes

Most black hole binaries are in systems where the outer edge of the disk is cool enough to dip below the hydrogen ionisation point. They are generically transient, and show large variability. These give us a sequence of spectra at differing mass accretion rates onto the central object, allowing us to test accretion models.

What is seen is generally very different to the simple Shakura-Sunyaev disk emission ideas outlined above. At high mass accretion rates (approaching Eddington) the spectra are dominated by a soft component at $`kT1`$ keV which is strongly (very high state: VHS) or weakly (high state: HS) Comptonized by low temperature thermal (or quasi–thermal) electrons with $`kT520`$ keV (Zycki et al., 1998; Gierlinski et al., 1999; Kubota et al., 2001). There is also a rather steep power law tail ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }23`$) which extends out beyond $`511`$ keV in the few objects with good high energy data (e.g. Grove et al., 1998). At lower mass accretion rates, below $`23`$ per cent of Eddington, there is a rather abrupt transition when the soft component drops in temperature and luminosity. Instead this (low state: LS) spectrum is dominated by thermal Comptonization, with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }<1.9`$, rolling over at energies of $`150`$ keV (see e.g. the reviews by Tanaka & Lewin 1995; van der Klis 1995; Nowak 1995). This spectral form seems to continue even down to very low luminosities ($`0.01`$ per cent of Eddington: the quiescent or off state e.g. Kong et al. 2000). Figure 1b shows a selection of VHS, HS and LS spectra from the GBH transient RXTE J1550-564.

While XMM-Newton and Chandra have opened up new windows in high resolution X-ray imaging and spectroscopy, RXTE gives an unprecedented volume of data on these sources. To get a broad idea of the range of spectral states then quantity as well as quality is important! But this also means that plotting individual spectra is too time consuming. Colour-colour and colour-intensity diagrams have long been used in neutron star X-ray binaries to get an overview of source behavior. The problem is that they often depend on the instrument response (counts within a certain energy range) and on the absorbing column towards the source. To get a measure of the source behaviour we want to plot intrinsic colour, i.e. unabsorbed flux ratios over a given energy band. To do this we need a physical model. Plainly there can be emisison from an accretion disk, together with a higher energy component from comptonisation. Reflection of this emission from the surface of the accretion disk can also contribute to the spectrum. Thus we use a model consisting of a multicolour accretion disk, comptonised emission (which is not a power law at energies close to either the seed photon temperature or the mean electron energy), with gaussian line and smeared edge to roughly model the reflected spectral features, with galactic absorption.

We use this model to fit the RXTE PCA data from several different black holes from archival RXTE data to follow their broad band spectral evolution. We choose 4 energy bands, 3-4 keV, 4-6.4 keV, 6.4-9.7 keV and 9.7-16 keV, and integrate the unabsorbed model over these ranges to form intrinsic colours and use the generally fairly well known distance to convert the extrapolated bolometric flux to total luminosity. Again, since the mass of the central object is fairly well known we can translate the bolometric luminosity into a fraction of the Eddington luminosity.

Figure 2a shows a hard colour versus luminosity plot for the black holes Cyg X-1 (diamonds), GX339-4 (squares) and J1550-564 (circles). The general trend is spectra with $`L/L_{Edd}<0.03`$ to be hard while those at higher luminosities are soft. The hard spectra from J1550-564 at 10 per cent of Eddington are from the extremely rapid rise to outburst (see Wilson & Done 2001) where the accretion flow was presumably far from steady state. Apart from this, it is clear that there is a transition from hard to soft spectra at a few per cent of Eddington.

The huge range in spectral behaviour is brought out more clearly on a colour-colour plot (Figure 2b). The hardest spectra (low/hard state) form a well defined diagonal track, where hard and soft colour change together while the soft spectra show an amazing variety of shapes. The points corresponding to the spectra in figure 1b are (2,1.5) for the low/hard, (0.7,0.7) for the high state, (1.4,0.8) for the VHS and (1,0.1) for the ultrasoft spectrum.

## 4 Observations of Accretion Flows around Neutron stars

Neutron stars without a strong magnetic field ($`B<10^{12}`$ G) come in two flavors, named atolls and Z sources. Z sources are named after a Z-shaped track they produce on an X-ray colour-colour diagram, while atolls are named after their C (or atoll) shaped track. These differences between the two LMXBs categories probably reflect differences in both mass accretion rate, $`\dot{M}`$, and magnetic field, $`B`$, with the Z sources having high luminosity (typically more than 50 per cent of the Eddington limit) and magnetic field ($`B10^9`$ G) while the atolls have lower luminosity (generally less than 10 per cent of Eddington) and low magnetic field ($`B10^9`$ G) (Hasinger & van der Klis 1989).

Most of these are stable to the disk instability (neutron stars round the same mass companion need to be closer than a black hole for the star to fill its Roche lobe. The disk is smaller, and hotter so less likely to trigger the hydrogen ionisation instability: King & Ritter 1998). However, there are a few (probably evolved) atoll systems which are transient, Figure 3a shows the colour-luminosity plot for these systems (small filled circles), while figure 3b shows their colour-colour diagram. Plainly there is again a switch from a well defined hard state to a softer spectrum at $`10`$ % of Eddington, although here the soft state also forms a single well defined track. Because these are intrinsic colours, this diagram can be overlaid on that for the black holes. It is clear that the neutron star spectra evolve in very different ways with mass accretion rate, and that the softest black hole spectra (high state and ultrasoft) are not seen in these atoll sources.

However, the ’ultrasoft’ spectrum is not a unique black hole signature as the odd neutron star binary Cir X–1 (tentatively classed as a Z source) has been known for a long time to show such a spectrum. Figures 3a and b also include data from Cir X-1 (stars) and standard Z sources (large filled circles). It is immediately clear that the standard Z sources do not vary by much from Eddington and that their spectral variability along their Z is rather small also (the Z track in figure 3b is mostly masked by the symbol size!). And while Cir X-1 is not convincingly like either class of system, the important point here is that Cir X-1 certainly ends up at the same ’ultrasoft’ spectrum as the black holes on a colour-colour diagram. Perhaps when the mass accretion rate is extremely high then the flow is so optically and geometrically thick that it completely swamps the central object, so that the nature of the central object becomes unimportant. However, no neutron star systems show the high state spectra. These may be a unique black hole signature, as the boundary layer which should always be present in the neutron stars will provide a higher temperature (harder) component, unless the flow is so thick that it completely buries the central object.

## 5 X-ray emission in the low/hard state

Hard X–rays are a generic feature of accretion onto a black hole in all spectral states, yet the standard SS disk models cannot produce such emission. Even worse, the observations show that we have to explain different sorts of hard X–ray emission, with a fairly well defined spectral switch between the hard and soft spectra at luminosities of around 3 per cent of Eddington. This mechanism has to work also in the low magnetic field neutron stars at low mass accretion rates.

To get hard X-rays then a large fraction of the gravitational energy released by accretion must be dissipated in an optically thin environment where it does not thermalise, and so is able to reach much higher temperatures. For the SS disk, an obvious candidate is that there are magnetic flares above the disk, generated by the Balbus–Hawley MHD dynamo responsible for the disk viscosity (Balbus & Hawley 1991). Buoyancy could cause the magnetic field loops to rise up to the surface of the disk, so they can reconnect in regions of fairly low particle density. This must be happening at some level, and is shown by numerical simulations, but current models (although these are highly incomplete as in general the simulated disks are not radiative) do not carry enough power out from the disk to reproduce the observed low/hard state (Miller & Stone 2000).

If such mechanisms produce the low state spectra, then we also need a mechanism for the transition. The obvious candidate is the radiation pressure instability. However, the disk is no longer a standard SS disk as much of the power is dissipated in a magnetic corona rather than in the optically thick disk. The disk is cooler and denser (Svensson & Zdziarski 1994), which means that it is gas pressure dominated up to higher mass accretion rates than a standard SS disk. The disk just starts to hit the radiation pressure instability at a few per cent of Eddington when the fraction of power dissipated in the corona is around 60 per cent, but in the limit where all the power is dissipated in the corona then the disk is stable at all mass accretion rates below the Eddington limit (Svensson & Zdziarski 1994).

An alternative to the SS disk models is that the inner disk is replaced by an optically thin, X–ray hot accretion flow. This flow still has to dissipate angular momentum, so magnetic reconnection is still the source of heating, but the assumption here is that the accretion energy is given mainly to the protons, and that the electrons are only heated via Coulomb collisions. The proton temperature approaches the virial temperature so pressure support becomes important and the flow is no longer geometrically thin. The electrons cool by radiating, while the protons cool only by Coulomb collisions, so the flow is intrinsically a two temperature plasma. Where the electrons radiate most of the gravitational energy through comptonisation of photons from the outer disk then the solution is that of a Shapiro-Lightman-Eardley (SLE: Shaprio et al 1976) flow, while if the protons carry most of the accretion energy into the black hole then this forms the advection dominated accretion flows (Narayan & Yi 1996). These two solutions are related, as in general both advection and radiative cooling are important (Chen et al 1995, Zdziarski et al 1998). They are sketched as the grey line in Figure 1a. The SLE flows are unstable, although not dramatically so (Zdziarski 1998), while ADAFs are stable (Narayan & Yi 1995).

Importantly, both optically thin flows give typical electron temperatures of $`100`$ keV, as required to explain the low/hard spectra, and both can only exist (in fact they merge) at mass accretion rates below a critical value of a few per cent of Eddington (Chen et al., 1995) as when the flow becomes optically thick then the Coulomb collisions become efficient so that the flow collapses back into the one temperature SS disk solution. Hence these flows could produce both the quiescent and LS spectra, and the collapse of such flows may give the physical mechanism for the hard-soft state transition (Esin et al., 1997)

## 6 X-ray emission in the high/soft states

The high mass accretion rate spectra are dominated by the disk emission, but there is always a weak, power law X-ray tail (HS) and sometimes strong comtonisation of the disk emission (VHS). Magnetic reconnection above the disk is really the only known contender for producing the X-ray tail, but here the electrons must have a nonthermal spectrum (Gierlinski et al., 1999). The strong comptonisation of the disk may be connected to this same mechanism, with the electrons partailly thermalising to produce a thermal/nonthermal hybrid plasma (Poutanen & Coppi 1998). Alternatively, the comptonisation may be connected to the inner portion of the disk, either overheating in the standard disk equations (SS; Beloborodov 1998), or as a result of trying to change its structure when it reaches the radiation pressure instability (Kubota et al., 2001).

Figure 4 sketches all these potential hard X–ray emission mechanisms.

## 7 A Unified description of Accretion flows in X-ray binaries

A truncated disk/inner hot flow model can explain the evolution of the different classes of X-ray binaries on a colour-colour and colour-luminosity diagram. For all types of sources we assume that the evolution of the source can be explained if the main parameter driving the spectral evolution is the average mass accretion rate, $`\dot{m}`$. This is not the same as the instantaneous mass accretion rate, inferred from the X-ray luminosity. There is some much longer timescale in the system, presumably tied to the response of the disk and/or inner flow (e.g. van der Klis 2000; 2001). While the truncation mechanism is not well understood, it seems likely that conductive heating of a cool disk by the hot plasma (especially if they are magnetically connected) could lead to evaporation of the disk (Meyer & Meyer-Hofmeister 1994; Rozanska & Czerny 2000), so that there is a smooth tranistion from an outer disk to inner hot flow.

A qualitative picture could be as follows, starting at low $`\dot{m}`$. For the black holes, as $`\dot{m}`$ increases then the truncation radius of the disk decreases, so it penetrates further into the hot flow. The changing geometry gives more soft photons to cool the hot flow, and so leads to softer spectra. Both hard and soft colours soften together as the power law produced by compton scattering in the inner flow is still the only component within the PCA bandpass. Then the inner flow reaches its maximum luminosity, and collapses. As the inner disk replaces the hot flow then the disk is close enough to contribute to the spectrum above 3 keV, so the soft colour abruptly softens. The hard X-ray tail is produced by the small fraction of magnetic reconnection which takes place outside of the optically thick disk (high state). At even higher $`\dot{m}`$ then the disk structure is not well understood, but there seems to be a choice of two disk states, one in which the inner disk emission is strongly comptonised (very high state), characterised by moderate hard and soft colours or else is extremely disk dominated, as characterised by very soft hard colours.

The atoll neutron stars show similar evolution, except that they also have a solid surface and so have a boundary layer. At low $`\dot{m}`$ then the disk is truncated a long way from the neutron star, and the boundary layer is mostly optically thin, so it joins smoothly onto the emission from the inner accretion flow. Reprocessed photons from the X-ray illuminated surface form the seed photons for compton cooling of the inner flow. As $`\dot{m}`$ increases, the disk starts to move inward, but the cooling is dominated by seed photons from the neutron star rather than from the disk, so the geometry and hence the high energy spectral shape does not change. The atolls keep constant hard colour, but the soft colour softens as the seed photon energy moves into the PCA band. The inner flow/boundary layer reaches its maximum luminosity when it becomes optically thick. This causes the hard colour to soften as the cooling is much more effective as the boudary layer thermalises, so its temperature drops. The disk replaces the inner hot flow, so the disk temperature starts to contribute to the PCA bandpass so the soft colour softens abruptly. The track moves abruptly down and to the left during this transition. After this then increasing $`\dot{m}`$ increases the disk temperature, so the motion is to higher soft colour (Gierlinski & Done 2002a; 2002b). The ’banana state’ is then analogous to the high/soft state in the galactic black holes, but with additional luminosity from the boundary layer.

The Z sources can be similar to the atolls, but with the addition of a magnetic field (Hasinger & van der Klis 1989). In general they are stable to the disk instability because of the high mass accretion rates, so vary only within a factor of 2. The disk evaporation efficiency decreases as a function of increasing mass accretion rate, so this cannot truncate the disc in the Z sources. Instead the truncation is likely to be caused by stronger magnetic field, but here the increased mass accretion rate means that the inner flow/boundary layer is already optically thick, and so cooler (Gierlinski & Done 2002a).

Models with a moving inner disk radius at low mass accretion rates also can qualitatively explain the variability power spectra of these sources. They show characteristic frequencies in the form both of breaks and Quasi Periodic Oscillations (QPO’s). These features are related ($`f_{break}10f_{QPO}`$ for the low frequency QPO), and they move, with the frequencies generally being higher (indicating smaller size scales) at higher $`\dot{m}`$ (see e.g. the review by van der Klis 2000). Recent progress has concentrated on the similarity between the relationship between the QPO and break frequencies in black holes and neutron star systems (e.g. the review by van der Klis 2000) If they truly are the same phenomena then the mechanism must be connected to the accretion disk properties and not to the magnetosphere or surface of the neutron star. While the variability is not yet understood in detail, all QPO and break frequency models use a sharp transition in the accretion disk in some form to pick out a preferred timescale (e.g. van der Klis 2000), so by far the easiest way to change these frequencies is to change the inner disk radius.

## 8 Observational tests of the Low/hard state geometry

While disk truncation with an inner X-ray hot flow can form a coherent picture for the low mass accretion rate X-ray binaries and Z sources, there is the alternative model in which the low state is produced by magnetic flares above an untruncated disk. This is a very different geometry to that of a truncated disk, so there should be some testable, observational signatures of the inner disk which can enable us to discriminate between these two models.

### 8.1 Direct disk emission

The most direct way to see whether there is an inner disk is look at the disk emission. The SS disk models make clear predictions about the temperature and luminosity of the disk, and these can easily be modified for the case where some fraction $`f`$ of the energy is dissipated above and below the disk (Svensson & Zdziarski 1994). Both disk temperature, and luminosity, and fraction of energy emitted in the corona can be observed with a broad band spectrum showing both disk and hard X-ray emission, so the disk inner radius can be constrained directly from the data.

However, the expected temperatures for disks around black holes accreting at a few per cent of Eddington are in the EUV/soft X-ray region where interstellar absorption is important. Most black holes and neutron stars are in the galactic plane, so there is high obscuration. ASCA and SAX observations of Cyg X-1 in the low/hard state infer disk temperatures of $`0.1`$ keV (di Salvo et al., 2001), while the broad band SAX spectrum also shows its total bolometric luminosity was about 2 per cent of Eddington, with 70 per cent of this emitted in the hard X-ray spectrum (di Salvo et al., 2001). Both energetics and disk temperature are consistent with a disk truncated at about 50 Rs, but an untruncated disk with 70 per cent of the power dissipated above the optically thick disk material has a temperature of $`0.2`$ keV. This is marginally inconsistent with that observed, but not dramatically so, and the absorption to Cyg X-1 is fairly high so there are some systematic uncertainties.

The disk is much more clearly seen in the transient black hole system RXTE J1118+480. This has extremely low galactic absorption, so the disk emission can be detected with HST and EVUE. The temperature is $`0.02`$ keV, while the luminosity is again a few per cent of Eddington, with about 40 per cent of the total emitted in hard X-rays. This low disk temperature is completely inconsistent with a disk extending down to the last stable orbit (McClintock et al. 2001), even with 90 per cent of the power dissipated in a hot corona. Esin et al., (2001) sucessfully fit the overall spectral shape with a truncated disk/inner advective flow model (Figure 5).

### 8.2 Reflection

An independent way to study the extent of the optically thick accretion flow is via reflection. Wherever hard X–rays illuminate optically thick material then there is some probability that the X–rays can be reflected. The reflection probability is given by a trade–off between the importance of electron scattering and photo–electric absorption. Since the latter is energy dependent, the albedo is also energy dependent, with higher energy photons being preferentially reflected due to the smaller photo–electric opacity of the material. This gives rise to a reflected spectrum that is harder than the intrinsic spectrum, with photo–electric edge features, and associated fluorescent lines imprinted on it. Since iron is the highest atomic number element which is astrophysically abundant, the iron K edge is particularly prominent, at 7.1–9.3 keV depending on the ionization state of the reflecting material, together with its associated iron K$`\alpha `$ fluorescence line emission at 6.4–6.9 keV (see e.g. the review by Fabian et al., 2000).

The reflected spectrum (line and continuum) is smeared by special and general relativistic effects of the motion of the disk in the deep gravitational potential well (Fabian et al., 1989; Fabian et al 2001). The fraction of the incident flux which is reflected gives a measure of the solid angle of the optically thick disk as observed from the hard X–ray source, while the amount of smearing shows how far the material extends into the gravitational potential of the black hole. This should give a clear test of whether the inner disk is present.

The Galactic Black holes in the low/hard state show overwhelmingly that the solid angle is significantly less than $`2\pi `$, and that the smearing is less than expected for a disk extending down to the last stable orbit (Zycki et al.,1997; 1998; 1999; Gierlinski et al., 1997; Done & Zycki 1999; Zdziarski et al., 1999; Gilfanov et al., 1999; Revnivtsev et al., 2000). While this is clearly consistent with the idea that the disk is trunctated in the low/hard state, an alternative explanation for the lack of reflection and smearing is that the inner disk or top layer of the inner disk is completely ionised. There are then no atomic features, and the disk reflection is unobservable in the 2–20 keV range as it appears instead to be part of the power law continuum (Ross & Fabian 1993; Ross et al., 1999, Nayakshin et al 2000). Ionisation could be especially important in GBH due to the high disk temperature predicted by SS untruncated disk models, and indeed in the HS and VHS the reflection signature from the disk in GBH is clearly ionised (Gierlinski et al., 1999; Wilson & Done 2001; Miller et al., 2001). However, for the low/hard state, the observed disk temperatures of less than 0.1 keV are not sufficent to strongly ionise iron. Collisional ionisation does not strongly distort the GBH reflection, but photo-ionisation can be very important, and models with complex photo-ionisation structure can fit the observed reflection signature by an untruncated disk (Young et al 2001; Done & Nayakshin 2001; Ballantyne et al., 2001). However, the inner disk in such models is not completely invisible as the illuminating photons at $`100`$ keV cannot be reflected elastically. They heat the disk due to compton downscattering, so it reprocesses and thermalises the hard X–rays down to temperatures which are typically of order of the temperature expected from a Shakura-Sunyaev inner disk or higher. While detailed models of the thermalised emission from complex ionisation models have not yet been fit to the data, at least 20 per cent of the illuminating flux should be thermalised by the inner disk, leading to a higher temperature than observed in RXTE J1118+480.

Reflection and reprocessed, thermal emission from the disk can be supressed entirely if the magnetic flares are expanding relativistically away from the disk (Beloborodov 1999). However, the disk emission in RXTE J1118+480 and Cyg X-1 would then have to be the intrinsic disk emission, and the expected temperature the observed luminosity with an untruncated disk is again higher than those observed.

## 9 Conclusions

A truncated disk at low mass accretion rates is compatible with all the constraints on the extent of the accretion disk as measured by direct emission and reflection. It can also give a unified picture of the evolution of the broad band spectral shape in both accreting black holes and neutron stars, and qualitatively explain the variability power spectra if the disk extends further into the gravitational potential as the mass accretion rate increases. The most convincing single measurement which challenges alternative, untruncated disk models for the low/hard state is the observed low temperature disk in the black hole transient RXTE J1118-480, with supporting evidence for a low disk temperature in Cyg X-1. Evaporation of the disk into a hot inner accretion flow gives a plausible physical mechanism for the truncation, and the mass accretion rate at which the inner flow becomes optically thick gives a mechanism for the spectral switch from hard to soft spectra. At higher mass accretion rates the structure of the accretion disk is not well understood, and the data seem to show a variety of soft spectral shapes which may be associated with optically thick advection (slim disks) and/or the radiation pressure instability and/or overheating of the inner disk.

We can scale these ideas up to AGN if the accretion flow is simply a function of radius in terms of Schwarzchild radii and mass accretion rate in terms of fraction of the Eddington rate. The disk evaporation mechanism should still work in the same way around supermassive black holes (Rozanska & Czerny 2000). Thus it seems likely that those AGN which accrete at a low fraction of the Eddington limit should also be similar to the low/hard state from galactic black holes. Conversely, AGN at high mass accretion rates (Narrow line Seyfert 1’s and MCG-6-30-15 ?) are probably the counterparts of the high and very high state spectra seen in the Galactic black holes where the disk probably extends down to the last stable orbit. To test these ideas we again need some way to determine the extent of the inner disk, but as the disk temperature scales as $`M^{1/4}`$ then it is even harder to observe the direct disk emission in AGN than in GBH. Reflection is then probably the best current way to track the extent of the optically thick accretion disk, and the very broad line seen in MCG-6-30-15 (Tanaka et al., 1995; Wilms et al., 2002) points to a disk which extends down to at least the last stable orbit. However, results from other AGN are currently controversial. Lubinski & Zdziarski (2001) find that AGN with harder spectra and probably lower mass accretion rates show less relativistic smearing and less reflection, consistent with the accretion picture outlined above for the galactic sources, while previous literature has stressed the similarity of the line profiles to that of MCG-6-30-15 (e.g. Nandra et al 1997). Current challenges to observers are to disentangle the shape of the line in AGN, especially those with hard spectra, so as to determine the nature of the accretion flow in low mass accretion rate AGN, and to theoreticians to develop a better understanding of the high mass accretion rate disks.

## 10 Acknowledgements

Much of this review includes ideas developed in collaborations with Marek Gierlinski, Aya Kubota and Piotr Zycki.


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# Effective 𝑁-body dynamics for the massless Nelson model and adiabatic decoupling without spectral gap

## 1 Introduction

The physical picture underlying nonrelativistic quantum electrodynamics is that of charged particles which interact through the exchange of photons and dissipate energy through emission of photons. In situations where the velocities of the particles are small compared to the propagation speed of the photons the interaction is given through effective, instantaneous pair potentials. If, in addition, also accelerations are small, then dissipation through radiation can be neglected in good approximation. Instead of full nonrelativistic QED we consider the massless Nelson model. This model describes $`N`$ spinless particles coupled to a scalar Bose field of zero mass.

The content of this work is a mathematical derivation of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for $`N`$ particles with Coulombic pair potentials from the massless Nelson model with ultraviolet cutoffs. The key mechanism in our derivation is adiabatic decoupling without a spectral gap.

Before we turn to a more careful discussion of the type of scaling we shall consider, notice that the coupling of $`N`$ noninteracting particles to the radiation field has three effects.

* The effective mass, or more precisely, the effective dispersion relation of the particles is modified. The term “effective” refers to the reaction of the particles to weak external forces. The physical picture is that each particle now carries a cloud of photons with it, which makes it heavier.
* The particles feel an interaction mediated through the field. If the propagation speed of the particles is small compared to the one of the photons, then retardation effects should be negligible and the interaction between the particles can be described in good approximation by instantaneous pair potentials.
* Energy is dissipated through photons moving freely to infinity. The motion of the particles is, in general, no longer of Hamiltonian type. The rate of energy emitted as photons is proportional to the acceleration of a particle squared.

The scaling to be studied is most conveniently explained on the classical level. The classical equations of motion for $`N`$ particles with positions $`q_j`$, masses $`m_j`$ and rigid “charge” distributions $`\rho _j`$ coupled to the scalar field $`\varphi (x,t)`$ with propagation speed $`c`$ are

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{c^2}}\ddot{\varphi }(x,t)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }_x\varphi (x,t){\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\rho _j(xq_j(t))`$ (1)
$`m_j\ddot{q}_j(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _^3}𝑑x(_x\varphi )(x,t)\rho _j(xq_j(t)),1jN.`$ (2)
One can think of $`\rho _j(x)=e_j\phi (x)`$ as a smeared out point charge $`e_j`$ with a form factor $`\phi 0`$ satisfying $`_^3𝑑x\phi (x)=1`$. Taking the limit $`c\mathrm{}`$ in (1) yields the Poisson equation for the field and thus, after elimination of the field, (2) describes $`N`$ particles interacting through smeared Coulomb potentials. Mass renormalization for the particles in not visible at leading order.

Instead of taking $`c\mathrm{}`$ one can as well explore for which scaling of the particle properties one obtains analogous effective equations. Since retardation effects should be negligible, the initial velocities of the particles are now assumed to be $`𝒪(\epsilon )`$ compared to the fixed propagation speed $`c=1`$ of the field, $`\epsilon 1`$. In order to see motion of the particles over finite distances, we have to follow this dynamics at least over times of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^1)`$. To make sure that the velocities are still of order $`𝒪(\epsilon )`$ after times of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^1)`$, the accelerations must be at most of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^2)`$. The last constraint also guarantees that the energy dissipated over times of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^1)`$ is at most of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^3)`$.

The natural procedure would now be to consider such initial data, for which the velocities stay of order $`𝒪(\epsilon )`$ over sufficiently long times. The problem simplifies if we assume, as we shall do in this work, that the mass of a particle is of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^2)`$. As a consequence accelerations are and stay of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^2)`$ uniformly for all initial conditions. In this scaling limit mass renormalization is not visible at leading order. Indeed, if we substitute $`t^{}=\epsilon t`$ and $`m_j^{}=\epsilon ^2m_j`$ in (1) and (2), we find that the limit $`\epsilon 0`$ is equivalent to the limit $`c\mathrm{}`$.

After quantization, however, the two limiting procedures are no longer equivalent. The limit $`c\mathrm{}`$ for the Nelson model was analyzed by Davies  and later also by Hiroshima , who removed the ultraviolet cutoff. A comparison of their results with ours can be found at the end of this introduction. We will adopt the point of view that it is more natural to explore the regime of particle properties which gives rise to effective equations than to take the limit $`c\mathrm{}`$.

The deeper reason for our choice is that the more natural procedure of restricting to appropriate initial conditions gives rise to a similar mathematical structure. If the bare mass of the particles of order $`𝒪(1)`$, then the proper scaling which yields effective equations with renormalized masses was introduced and analyzed for the classical Abraham model by Kunze and Spohn, see  and references therein. Denoting again the ratio of the velocities of the particles and the field as $`\epsilon `$, they consider charges initially separated by distances of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^2)`$ in units of their diameter. Hence the forces are $`𝒪(\epsilon ^4)`$ initially. For times up to order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^3)`$ and for appropriate initial conditions – excluding head on collisions – the separation of the particles remains of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^2)`$ and thus the velocities remain of order $`𝒪(\epsilon )`$. In particular, the rescaled macroscopic position $`q^{}(t^{})=\epsilon ^2q(t^{}/\epsilon ^3)`$ satisfies $`(d/dt^{})^2q^{}(t^{})=𝒪(\epsilon ^4)`$, which matches the order of the forces. As a consequence one obtains a sensible limiting dynamics for the macroscopic variables.

One would expect that the same scaling limit applied to the quantum mechanical model yields in a similar fashion effective dynamics with renormalized dispersion. However, inserting this scaling into the massless Nelson model, one faces mathematical problems beyond those in the simpler $`m=𝒪(\epsilon ^2)`$ scaling. Without going into details we remark that the main problem is that for massless bosons the Hamiltonian at fixed total momentum does not have a ground state in Fock space, cf. . (As a consequence it is not even clear how to translate the result in  for a single quantum particle coupled to a massive quantized scalar field and subject to weak external forces to the massless case.) Nevertheless, the simpler scaling with $`m=𝒪(\epsilon ^2)`$ provides at least a first step in the right direction, since the mechanism of adiabatic decoupling without gap will certainly play a crucial role also in a more refined analysis.

In the remainder of the introduction we briefly present the massless Nelson model, explain our main result and compare it to Davies’ “weak coupling limit” .

Up to a modified dispersion for the particles, the following model is obtained through canonical quantization of the classical system (1) and (2). The state space for $`N`$ spinless particles is $`L^2(^{3N})`$ and as Hamiltonian we take

$$H_\mathrm{p}=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\sqrt{c_{\mathrm{max}}^2\mathrm{\Delta }_{x_j}+c_{\mathrm{max}}^4m^2},$$
(3)
where $`c_{\mathrm{max}}`$ is the maximally attainable speed of the particles and $`m`$ their mass, $`\mathrm{}=1`$. As explained before, we consider the scaling limit

$$\epsilon 1\mathrm{with}c_{\mathrm{max}}=𝒪(\epsilon )\mathrm{and}m=𝒪(\epsilon ^2).$$
(4)
It might seem somewhat artificial to have a relativistic dispersion relation for the particles which does not contain the speed of light, but some other maximal speed $`c_{\mathrm{max}}`$. This is done only for the sake of simple presentation. We could as well consider the quadratic dispersion $`H_\mathrm{p}=_{j=1}^N\frac{1}{2m}\mathrm{\Delta }_{x_j}`$ for the particles. However, there would be no maximal speed and we would be forced to either introduce a cutoff for large momenta or to change the topology in (17). While both strategies are technically straightforward by using exactly the same methods as in  in the context of Born-Oppenheimer approximation, they would obscure the simple structure of our result.

We insert the scaling (4) into (3) and change units such that the particle Hamiltonian is now given through

$$H_\mathrm{p}^\epsilon =\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\sqrt{\epsilon ^2\mathrm{\Delta }_{x_j}+1}.$$
(5)
The particles are coupled to a scalar field whose state is an element of the bosonic Fock space over $`L^2(^3)`$ given as

$$=_{m=0}^{\mathrm{}}_{(\mathrm{s})}^mL^2(^3),$$
(6)
where $`_{(\mathrm{s})}^m`$ is the $`m`$-times symmetric tensor product and $`_{(\mathrm{s})}^0L^2(^3):=`$. The Hamiltonian for the free bosonic field is

$$H_\mathrm{f}=\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }(|k|),$$
(7)
where $`k`$ is the boson momentum. In our units the propagation speed of the bosons is equal to one. The reader who is not familiar with the notation is asked to consult the beginning of Section 3, where the model is introduced in full detail.

In the standard Nelson model the coupling between the $`j^{th}`$ particle and the field is given through

$$H_{\mathrm{I},j}=_^3𝑑y\varphi (y)\rho _j(yx_j),$$
(8)
where $`\varphi `$ is the field operator in position representation and $`x_j`$ the position of the $`j^{th}`$ particle. The charge density $`\rho _jL^1(^3)L^2(^3)`$ of the $`j^{th}`$ particle is assumed to be spherically symmetric and its Fourier transform is denoted by $`\widehat{\rho }_j`$. For the moment we also assume an infrared condition, namely that

$$\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{\widehat{\rho }_j(k)}{|k|^{3/2}}L^2(^3).$$
(9)
Condition (9) constrains the total charge of the system but not that of an individual particle to zero. The state of the combined particles + field system is an element of

$$=L^2(^{3N})$$

and its time evolution is generated by the Hamiltonian

$$H^\epsilon =H_\mathrm{p}^\epsilon \mathrm{𝟏}+\mathrm{𝟏}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }(|k|)+\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}H_{\mathrm{I},j}.$$
(10)
Note that $`H`$ contains no terms which directly couple different particles. All interactions between the particles must be mediated through the boson field.

Our goal is the construction of approximate solutions of the time dependent Schrödinger equation

$$i\epsilon \frac{d}{dt}\mathrm{\Psi }(t)=H^\epsilon \mathrm{\Psi }(t),\mathrm{\Psi }(0)=\mathrm{\Psi }_0$$
(11)
from solutions of an effective Schrödinger equation

$$i\epsilon \frac{d}{dt}\psi (t)=H_{\mathrm{eff}}^\epsilon \psi (t),\psi (0)=\psi _0L^2(^{3N})$$
(12)
for the particles only. Notice the factor $`\epsilon `$ in front of the time derivative in (11) and (12), which means that we switched to a time scale of order $`\epsilon ^1`$ in microscopic units. As explained before, this is necessary in order to see nontrivial dynamics of the particles, since their speed is $`𝒪(\epsilon )`$.

We remark that the scaling (4) coincides with the one in time-dependent Born-Oppenheimer approximation, where $`m=𝒪(\epsilon ^2)`$ is the mass of the nuclei and where, at fixed kinetic energy, the velocities of the nuclei are also of order $`𝒪(\epsilon )`$. The Hamiltonian (10) has the same structure as the molecular Hamiltonian and the role of the electrons in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is now played by the bosons.

The key observation for the following is that the interaction Hamiltonian depends only on the configuration $`x`$ of the particles and that the operator

$$H_0(x)=\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }(|k|)+\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}H_{\mathrm{I},j}(x),$$

which acts on $``$ for fixed $`x^{3N}`$, has a unique ground state $`\mathrm{\Omega }(x)`$ with ground state energy

$$E_0(x)=\underset{j=2}{\overset{N}{}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{j1}{}}V_{ij}(x_ix_j)+e_0,$$
(13)
where

$$V_{ij}(z)=_{^3\times ^3}𝑑v𝑑w\frac{\rho _i(vz)\rho _j(w)}{4\pi |vw|}$$
(14)
and

$$e_0=\frac{1}{2}\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}_{^3\times ^3}𝑑v𝑑w\frac{\rho _j(v)\rho _j(w)}{4\pi |vw|}.$$
(15)
$`V_{ij}(z)`$ is the electrostatic interaction energy of the charge distributions $`\rho _i`$ and $`\rho _j`$ at distance $`z`$, however, with the “wrong” sign. It is a peculiarity of the scalar field that the interaction between charges with equal sign is attractive. $`e_0`$ is the sum of all self energies. The remainder of the spectrum is purely absolutely continuous and the ground state energy is not isolated, cf. Figure 1.

Let $`P_{}(x)=|\mathrm{\Omega }(x)\mathrm{\Omega }(x)|`$, then the states in

$$\mathrm{Ran}P_{}=\{_{^{3N}}^{}𝑑x\psi (x)\mathrm{\Omega }(x):\psi L^2(^{3N})\}$$
(16)
correspond to wave packets without free bosons. If the particles are moving at small speeds and if the accelerations are also small, one expects that no free bosons are created, i.e. that Ran$`P_{}`$ is approximately invariant under the dynamics generated by $`H^\epsilon `$. Moreover the wave function $`\psi (x)`$ of the particles should approximately be governed by the effective Schrödinger equation (12) with

$$H_{\mathrm{eff}}^\epsilon =\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\sqrt{\epsilon ^2\mathrm{\Delta }_{x_j}+1}+\underset{j=2}{\overset{N}{}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{j1}{}}V_{ij}(x_ix_j).$$

Our main result, Theorem 7, states that for $`\mathrm{\Psi }_0=^{}𝑑x\psi _0(x)\mathrm{\Omega }(x)`$ Ran$`P_{}`$ we have

$$e^{iH^\epsilon t/\epsilon }\mathrm{\Psi }_0_{^{3N}}^{}𝑑x\left(e^{iH_{\mathrm{eff}}^\epsilon t/\epsilon }\psi _0\right)(x)e^{ie_0t/\epsilon }\mathrm{\Omega }(x)=𝒪(\epsilon \sqrt{\mathrm{ln}(1/\epsilon )})(1+|t|)\mathrm{\Psi }_0.$$
(17)
Notice that in the approximate solution of the full Schrödinger equation the state of the field is, up to a fast oscillating global phase $`e^{ie_0t/\epsilon }`$, adiabatically following the motion of the particles. In particular, there are no bosons traveling back and forth between the particles and the phrase that the particles “interact through the exchange of bosons”, which comes from perturbation theory, should not be taken literally in the present setting.

As mentioned before, there is a strong similarity to the time-dependent Born-Oppenheimer approximation, where one obtains an effective Schrödinger equation for the nuclei in a molecule with an effective potential generated by the electrons . In both cases the physical mechanism which leads to the approximate invariance of the subspace Ran$`P_{}`$ is adiabatic decoupling. I.e. the separation of time scales for the motion of the different parts of the system lets the fast degrees of freedom, in our case the bosons, instantaneously adjust to the motion of the slow degrees of freedom, the particles.

However, for massless bosons – in contrast to the Born-Oppenheimer approximation – there is no spectral gap which pointwise separates the energy band $`E_0=\{(x,E_0(x)):x^{3N}\}`$ from the remainder of the spectrum of $`H_0(x)`$, but $`E_0`$ lies at the bottom of continuous spectrum. Hence we need a space-adiabatic theorem, cf. , without gap condition. Only recently time-adiabatic theorems without a gap condition were established in . The notion time-adiabatic refers to the setting where the Hamiltonian of the system is itself time-dependent and varies on a slow time scale. In Section 2 a general space-adiabatic theorem without gap condition is formulated and proved. The proof is based on ideas developed in  and our approach gives, in particular, good control on the rate of convergence in the adiabatic limit.

As an application of the result from Section 2 we consider in Section 3 the scaling limit $`\epsilon 0`$ of the massless Nelson model as described above. We emphasize at this point that, in view of the missing gap condition, the rate of convergence $`𝒪(\epsilon \sqrt{\mathrm{ln}(1/\epsilon )})`$ in (17) is surprisingly fast, since it is almost as good as in the case with a gap. Moreover, if all particles have individually total charge equal to zero, then the rate is exactly $`𝒪(\epsilon )`$ as in the case with a gap. Hence, the logarithmic correction must be attributed to the Coulombic long range character of the interparticle interaction. In the situation with gap it is known  that the wave function stays in a subspace Ran$`P_{}^\epsilon `$ which is $`\epsilon `$-close to the band subspace Ran$`P_{}`$ up to an error of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^{\mathrm{}})`$. However, in the situation without gap, we expect that a piece of order $`\epsilon ^\alpha `$, $`\alpha <\mathrm{}`$, of the wave function is “leaking out” of Ran$`P_{}`$ in the sense that it becomes orthogonal to Ran$`P_{}`$ under time evolution. Physical considerations suggest that $`\alpha =3/2`$ for the present problem, see Remark 9. As a consequence, the $`\epsilon ^2`$ corrections to the effective Hamiltonian are still dominating dissipation and can be formally derived from the results in . The effective Hamiltonian (55) then contains a renormalized mass term and the momentum dependent Darwin interaction.

Finally let us compare our results to those obtained by Davies , who considers the limit $`c\mathrm{}`$ for the Hamiltonian

$$H^c=H_\mathrm{p}\mathrm{𝟏}+\mathrm{𝟏}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }(c|k|)+\sqrt{c}H_\mathrm{I}.$$
(18)
Notice that $`H^c`$ is obtained through canonical quantization of (1) and (2) if one does not set $`c=1`$ as we did before. Davies proves that for all $`t`$

$$\mathrm{s}\underset{c\mathrm{}}{lim}e^{iH^ct}(\psi \mathrm{\Omega })=(e^{i(H_{\mathrm{eff}}+e_0)t}\psi )\mathrm{\Omega },$$

where $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\{1,0,0,\mathrm{}\}`$ denotes the Fock vacuum and $`H_\mathrm{p}:=H_\mathrm{p}^{\epsilon =1}`$ and $`H_{\mathrm{eff}}:=H_{\mathrm{eff}}^{\epsilon =1}`$. This shows that although the limit $`c\mathrm{}`$ is equivalent to our scaling on the classical level, the results for the quantum model differ qualitatively. While we obtain effective dynamics for states which contain a nonzero number of bosons independent of $`\epsilon `$, cf. (17), the $`c\mathrm{}`$ limit yields effective dynamics for states which contain no bosons at all. Furthermore, the limit $`\epsilon 0`$ is a singular limit as no limiting dynamics for $`\epsilon =0`$ exists.

In Section 3 we also consider an infrared-renormalized model suggested in  and , which allows us to do without the global infrared condition (9). The results are exactly the same as in the standard Nelson model.

## 2 A space-adiabatic theorem without gap condition

Generalizing from the time-adiabatic theorem of quantum mechanics , we consider perturbations of self-adjoint operators $`H_0`$, which are fibered over the base space $`^n`$, where, for better readability, we use $`M:=^n`$ to denote this base space. Let $`_\mathrm{f}`$ be a separable Hilbert space and let $`dx`$ denote Lebesgue measure. Recall that $`H_0`$ acting on $`=L^2(M,dx)_\mathrm{f}=L^2(M,dx;_\mathrm{f})`$ is called fibered, cf. , if there is a measurable map $`MxH_0(x)`$ with values in the self-adjoint operators on $`_\mathrm{f}`$ such that

$$H_0=_M^{}𝑑xH_0(x).$$

There seems to be no standard name for the set

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }=\left\{(x,s)M\times ,s\sigma (H_0(x))\right\}$$

and we propose to call it the fibered spectrum of $`H_0`$.

Let $`\sigma _{}\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ be such that $`xP_{}(x)`$ is measurable, where $`P_{}(x)`$ denotes the spectral projection of $`H_0(x)`$ associated with $`\sigma _{}(x)`$. Then $`P_{}=_M^{}𝑑xP_{}(x)`$ is an orthogonal projection which commutes with $`H_0`$, but which is in general not a spectral projection of $`H_0`$.

We consider perturbations of $`H_0`$, which mix the fibers, in a sense, slowly. As a prototype consider for a sufficiently regular real valued function $`h`$ on “momentum space” $`^n`$ the self-adjoint operator $`h^\epsilon =h(i\epsilon _x)`$ on $`L^2(M)`$. Here $`\epsilon >0`$ is the adiabatic parameter and $`[h^\epsilon \mathrm{𝟏},A]=𝒪(\epsilon )`$ for any operator $`A`$ which is fibered over $`M`$. Let

$$H^\epsilon =H_0+h^\epsilon \mathrm{𝟏},$$

then the invariant subspaces for $`H_0`$ constructed above are still “approximately” invariant for $`H^\epsilon `$ with $`\epsilon `$ small, since $`[H^\epsilon ,P_{}]=𝒪(\epsilon )`$ and thus $`[e^{iH^\epsilon s},P_{}]=𝒪(\epsilon |s|)`$. But the relevant time scale for the dynamics generated by $`h^\epsilon `$ is $`t/\epsilon `$ with $`t=𝒪(1)`$. Thus the unitary group of interest is $`e^{iH^\epsilon t/\epsilon }`$. However, according to the naive argument, $`[e^{iH^\epsilon t/\epsilon },P_{}]=O(|t|)`$ and the subspaces Ran$`P_{}`$ seem to be not even approximately invariant as $`\epsilon 0`$.

It is well known  that the failure of the naive argument can be cured if $`\sigma _{}`$ is separated by a gap from the remainder of the fibered spectrum $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. Then $`[e^{iH^\epsilon t/\epsilon },P_{}]=𝒪(\epsilon )(1+|t|)`$, a result that was baptized space-adiabatic theorem in . The object of this section is to establish an analogous result without assuming a gap condition.

We remark that the general setup for space-adiabatic theory are Hamiltonians which are “fibered” over phase space, in the sense that they can be written as quantizations of operator valued symbols .

### 2.1 Assumptions and results

Let $`H_0(x)`$, $`xM`$, be a family of self-adjoint operators on some common dense domain $`𝒟_\mathrm{f}`$, $`_\mathrm{f}`$ a separable Hilbert space. Let $`_{H_0(x)}`$ denote the graph norm of $`H_0(x)`$ on $`𝒟`$, i.e., for $`\psi 𝒟`$, $`\psi _{H_0(x)}=H_0(x)\psi +\psi `$. We assume that all the $`H_0(x)`$-norms are equivalent in the sense that there is an $`x_0M`$ and constants $`C_1,C_2<\mathrm{}`$ such that $`C_1\psi _{H_0(x_0)}\psi _{H_0(x)}C_2\psi _{H_0(x_0)}`$. Then

$$H_0=_M^{}𝑑xH_0(x)$$

with domain $`D(H_0)=L^2(M)𝒟`$ is self-adjoint, where here and in the following $`𝒟`$ resp. $`D(H_0)`$ are understood to be equipped with the $`_{H_0(x_0)}`$ resp. $`_{H_0}`$ norm. For $`k_0`$ and $``$ some Banach space let

$$C_\mathrm{b}^k(^n,)=\{fC^k(^n,):\underset{x^n}{sup}_x^\alpha f(x)_{}<\mathrm{}\alpha ^n\mathrm{with}|\alpha |k\}.$$

$`(_1,_2)`$ denotes the space of bounded linear operators from $`_1`$ to $`_2`$ and $`_{\mathrm{sa}}()`$ denotes the set of bounded self-adjoint operators on $``$. Let $`||`$ be the Euclidean norm on $`^n`$ and denote the Hessian of a function $`A`$ on $`^n`$ by $`^{(2)}A(x)`$. For the resolvent we write $`R_\lambda (A)=(A\lambda )^1`$. Let $`m2`$.

###### Assumption H$`{}_{}{}^{m}{}_{0}{}^{}`$.

Let $`H_0()C_\mathrm{b}^m(M,(𝒟,_\mathrm{f}))`$ and for all $`xM`$ let $`P_{}(x)`$ be an orthogonal projection such that $`H_0(x)P_{}(x)=E(x)P_{}(x)`$ with $`P_{}()C_\mathrm{b}^{m+1}(M,(_\mathrm{f}))`$ and $`E()C_\mathrm{b}^m(M,)`$.

In addition one of the following assertions holds:

1. For $`1jn`$

$$\underset{\delta 0}{lim}\mathrm{ess}\underset{xM}{sup}\delta R_{E(x)i\delta }(H_0(x))(_{x_j}P_{})(x)P_{}(x)_{(_\mathrm{f})}=0.$$
(19)
2. There is a constant $`\delta _0>0`$ and a function $`\eta :[0,\delta _0][0,\delta _0]`$ with $`\eta (\delta )\delta `$ and a constant $`C<\mathrm{}`$ such that for $`\delta (0,\delta _0]`$ and $`1jn`$

$$\mathrm{ess}\underset{xM}{sup}R_{E(x)i\delta }(H_0(x))(_{x_j}P_{})(x)P_{}(x)_{(_\mathrm{f})}C\delta ^1\eta (\delta ).$$
(20)
3. In addition to (20) for $`1k,jn`$ also

$$\mathrm{ess}\underset{xM}{sup}_{x_k}\left(R_{E(x)i\delta }(H_0(x))(_{x_j}P_{})(x)P_{}(x)\right)_{(_\mathrm{f})}C\delta ^1\eta (\delta )$$
(21)
holds.

A few remarks concerning Assumption H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ are in order:

* It is not assumed that $`P_{}(x)`$ is the spectral projection of $`H_0(x)`$ corresponding to the eigenvalue $`E(x)`$. However, (19) holds pointwise in $`x`$ whenever $`P_{}(x)`$ is the spectral projection and has finite rank, cf. Proposition 2.
* Inequality (20) is always satisfied with $`\eta (\delta )=1`$. For Assumption H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (ii) and (iii) to have nontrivial consequences on the rate of convergence in the adiabatic theorem, $`\eta (\delta )`$ must satisfy $`lim_{\delta 0}\eta (\delta )=0`$. These assumptions might look rather artificial at first sight, but turn out to be very natural in the proof and also in our application. For the simpler time-adiabatic setting, which gives rise to similar conditions, we refer the reader to .
* The regularity of $`P_{}(x)`$ has to be assumed, since it does not follow from the regularity of $`H_0(x)`$ without the gap condition, even if $`P_{}(x)`$ is spectral. The regularity of $`E(x)`$ follows from the one of $`H_0(x)`$ and $`P_{}(x)`$ whenever $`P_{}(x)`$ has finite rank, as can be seen by writing $`E(x)=\text{tr}(H_0(x)P_{}(x))/\text{tr}P_{}(x)`$.

The “band subspace” Ran$`P_{}`$ defined through $`P_{}=_M^{}𝑑xP_{}(x)`$ is invariant under the dynamics generated by $`H_0`$, since $`[H_0,P_{}]=0`$ holds by construction. We will consider perturbations $`h^\epsilon `$ of $`H_0`$ satisfying

###### Assumption h<sup>m</sup>.

For $`\epsilon (0,1]`$ let $`h^\epsilon `$ be a self-adjoint operator with domain $`D(h)`$ independent of $`\epsilon `$ such that $`H_0+h^\epsilon `$ is essentially self-adjoint on $`D(h)D(H_0)`$. There exists an operator $`(Dh)^\epsilon _{\mathrm{sa}}()^n`$ with $`sup_{\epsilon (0,1]}|(Dh)^\epsilon |_{()}<\mathrm{}`$ satisfying:

1. There is a constant $`C<\mathrm{}`$ such that for each $`AC_\mathrm{b}^m(M,(_\mathrm{f}))`$

$$[h^\epsilon ,A]+i\epsilon _xA(Dh)^\epsilon _{()}C\underset{j=2}{\overset{m}{}}\epsilon ^j\underset{xM,|\alpha |=j}{sup}_x^\alpha A(x)_{(_\mathrm{f})}.$$
2. There is a constant $`C<\mathrm{}`$ such that

$$|[(Dh)^\epsilon ,H_0]|_{(D(H_0),)}+|[(Dh)^\epsilon ,h^\epsilon ]|_{()}\epsilon C.$$

By assumption, $`H^\epsilon =H_0+h^\epsilon `$ is essentially self-adjoint on $`D(h)D(H_0)`$ and we use its closure, again denoted by $`H^\epsilon `$, to define for $`t`$

$$U^\epsilon (t)=e^{iH^\epsilon t/\epsilon }.$$

Since, according to Assumption h<sup>m</sup> (i), $`[H^\epsilon ,P_{}]=[h^\epsilon ,P_{}]=𝒪(\epsilon )`$, the naive argument gives $`[U^\epsilon (t),P_{}]=|t|𝒪(1)`$. Indeed, our aim is to cure the failure of the naive argument and to show that Ran$`P_{}`$ is invariant for $`U^\epsilon (t)`$ in the limit $`\epsilon 0`$. To this end we will compare $`U^\epsilon (t)`$ with the unitary group generated by

$$H_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon =H_0+P_{}h^\epsilon P_{}+P_{}^{}h^\epsilon P_{}^{}.$$

Also $`H_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon `$ is self-adjoint on $`D(H^\epsilon )`$ since $`P_{}()C_\mathrm{b}^m(M,(_\mathrm{f}))`$ and thus $`H^\epsilon H_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon =P_{}^{}[h^\epsilon ,P_{}]P_{}P_{}[h^\epsilon ,P_{}]P_{}^{}`$ is bounded according to h<sup>m</sup> (i). Again we abbreviate for $`t`$

$$U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (t)=e^{iH_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon t/\epsilon },$$

and we have by construction that

$$[P_{},U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (t)]=0,$$

i.e. Ran$`P_{}`$ and Ran$`P_{}^{}`$ are invariant subspaces for the dynamics generated by $`H_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon `$.

###### Theorem 1.

Assume H$`{}_{}{}^{m}{}_{0}{}^{}`$ and h<sup>m</sup> for some $`m2`$. Let $`\epsilon (0,\delta _0]`$, then

* H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (i) implies that for $`t`$

$$\underset{\epsilon 0}{lim}U^\epsilon (t)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (t)_{()}=0,$$
(22)
* H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (ii) implies that for some constant $`C<\mathrm{}`$ and all $`t`$

$$U^\epsilon (t)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (t)_{()}C\eta (\epsilon ^{\frac{1}{2}})(1+|t|),$$
(23)
* H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (iii) implies that for some constant $`C<\mathrm{}`$ and all $`t`$

$$U^\epsilon (t)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (t)_{()}C\eta (\epsilon )(1+|t|).$$
(24)

Note that in Theorem 1 the whole spectrum of possible rates of convergence between $`o(1)`$ and $`𝒪(\epsilon )`$ as in the case with gap is covered. The estimates for the massless Nelson model as an application of Theorem 1 will show that, in principle, all rates can occur.

The following proposition shows that, assuming the first part of H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ but neither (i), (ii) or (iii), then Assumption H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (i) always holds pointwise in $`x`$ if $`P_{}(x)`$ is the spectral projection and has finite rank. The proof is analogous to the one of Lemma 4 in .

###### Proposition 2.

Assume H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{1}`$ without (i), (ii) or (iii). If $`P_{}(x)`$ is the spectral projection of $`H_0(x)`$ corresponding to the eigenvalue $`E(x)`$ and has finite rank, then

$$\underset{\delta 0}{lim}\delta R_{E(x)i\delta }(H_0(x))(_xP_{})(x)P_{}(x)_{(_\mathrm{f})}=0.$$
(25)
###### Proof.

Since $`P_{}(x)`$ has finite rank, the uniform statement (25) follows if we can show that $`lim_{\delta 0}\delta R_{E(x)i\delta }(H_0(x))\psi =0`$ for all $`\psi \text{Ran}(_xP_{})(x)P_{}(x)`$. We have

$$\underset{\delta 0}{lim}i\delta R_{E(x)i\delta }(H_0(x))\psi __\mathrm{f}^2=\underset{\delta 0}{lim}_{}\mu _\psi (d\lambda )\frac{\delta ^2}{(\lambda E(x))^2+\delta ^2}=\mu _\psi (E(x)),$$
(26)
where $`\mu _\psi `$ denotes the spectral measure of $`H_0(x)`$ for $`\psi `$. Since $`P_{}(x)`$ is the spectral projection on $`\{E(x)\}`$ and since, according to (29), Ran$`(_xP_{})(x)P_{}(x)`$ Ran$`P_{}^{}(x)`$ we have $`\mu _\psi (E(x))=0`$ and thus (25). ∎

It is clear from (26) that additional information on the regularity of the spectral measure $`\mu _\psi `$ provides some control on the rate of convergence in (26). E.g., if $`\mu _\psi (d\lambda )=\rho _\psi (\lambda )d\lambda `$ with $`\rho _\psi L^{\mathrm{}}(,d\lambda )`$, then

$$_{}\mu _\psi (d\lambda )\frac{\delta ^2}{(\lambda E(x))^2+\delta ^2}\rho _\psi _{\mathrm{}}_{}𝑑\lambda \frac{\delta ^2}{(\lambda E(x))^2+\delta ^2}=𝒪(\delta )$$

and hence (20) would hold pointwise in $`x`$ with $`\eta (\delta )=\delta ^{1/2}`$. In a sense, the rate $`𝒪(\epsilon \sqrt{\mathrm{ln}(1/\epsilon )})`$ for the massless Nelson model (17) is a consequence of the relevant spectral measure having a density $`\rho (\lambda )\lambda E(x)`$.

We emphasize that (25) for all $`xM`$ does not imply H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (i), even in the case of compact $`M`$. This is because for pointwise convergence to imply uniform convergence one would need uniform equicontinuity of a sequence of functions. However, in the time-adiabatic setting it is indeed sufficient to have (25) for almost all $`xI`$, where $`I`$ is the relevant time interval, see .

### 2.2 Proof of Theorem 1

We start with the standard argument and find that on $`D(H^\epsilon )`$

$`U^\epsilon (t)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (t)`$ $`=`$ $`U^\epsilon (t){\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑s{\displaystyle \frac{d}{ds}}\left(U^\epsilon (s)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (s)\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{\epsilon }}U^\epsilon (t){\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑sU^\epsilon (s)\left(H^\epsilon H_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon \right)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (s),`$
where

$$H^\epsilon H_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon =P_{}^{}h^\epsilon P_{}+P_{}h^\epsilon P_{}^{}=P_{}^{}[h^\epsilon ,P_{}]P_{}+\mathrm{adj}..$$
(27)
In (27) and in the following “$`\pm `$ adj.” means that the adjoint operator of the first term in a sum is added resp. subtracted. Inserting h<sup>m</sup> (i) into (27) and the result back into (2.2) one obtains

$`U^\epsilon (t)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (t)_{()}=`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑sU^\epsilon (s)\left(P_{}^{}(_xP_{})P_{}(Dh)^\epsilon P_{}+\text{adj.}\right)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (s)_{()}+𝒪(\epsilon )|t|.`$
In (2.2) we also used that

$$(_xP_{})(x)=P_{}^{}(x)(_xP_{})(x)P_{}(x)+\mathrm{adj}.,$$
(29)
which follows from $`(_xP_{})(x)=(_xP_{}^2)(x)=(_xP_{})(x)P_{}(x)+P_{}(x)(_xP_{})(x)`$.

The nontrivial part in adiabatic theorems is to show that also the remaining term on the right hand side of (2.2) vanishes as $`\epsilon 0`$. Assuming a gap condition, the basic idea is to express the integrand, which is $`𝒪(1)`$, as the time-derivative of a function that is $`𝒪(\epsilon )`$ plus a remainder that is $`𝒪(\epsilon )`$ and integrate, cf. . The key ingredient in this case would be the operator

$$F(x)=R_{E(x)}(H_0(x))(_xP_{})(x)P_{}(x),$$
(30)
which is, according to (29), well defined and bounded if the eigenvalue $`E(x)`$ is separated from the rest of the spectrum of $`H_0(x)`$ by a gap and if $`P_{}(x)`$ is spectral.

The definition (30) is made to give $`[H_0,F]=P_{}^{}\left(_xP_{}\right)P_{}`$. However, in absence of a gap (30) is not well defined as an operator on $`_\mathrm{f}`$ and, following , we shift the resolvent into the complex plane and define

$$F_\delta (x)=R_{E(x)i\delta }(H_0(x))P_{}^{}(x)(_xP_{})(x)P_{}(x).$$

One now obtains

$$[H_0(x),F_\delta (x)]=P_{}^{}(x)\left(_xP_{}\right)(x)P_{}(x)+Y_\delta (x)$$
(31)
with

$$Y_\delta (x)=i\delta R_{E(x)i\delta }(H_0(x))(_xP_{})(x)P_{}(x).$$
(32)
Assumptions H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (i), (ii) and (iii) each imply that $`lim_{\delta 0}Y_\delta _{()}=0`$. To see this recall that for $`A()L^{\mathrm{}}(M,(_\mathrm{f}))`$ one has

$$A_{()}=\mathrm{ess}\underset{x^n}{sup}A(x)_{(_\mathrm{f})}.$$

Note that for better readability we omit the Euclidean norm $`|\mathrm{}|`$ in the notation and understand that $`A`$ always includes also the Euclidean norm if $`A`$ is an operator with $`n`$ components. Thus with (32) we can make the remainder in (31) arbitrarily small by choosing $`\delta `$ small enough. However, for the time being we let $`\delta >0`$ but carefully keep track of the dependence of all errors on $`\delta `$.

By assumption $`H_0()C_\mathrm{b}^m(M,(𝒟,_\mathrm{f}))`$ and $`P_{}()C_\mathrm{b}^{m+1}(M,(_\mathrm{f}))`$, which implies $`F_\delta ()C_\mathrm{b}^m(M,(_\mathrm{f})^n)`$ and hence, according to h<sup>m</sup> (i),

$$[h^\epsilon ,F_\delta ]_{()}C\underset{j=1}{\overset{m}{}}\epsilon ^j\underset{|\alpha |=j}{sup}_x^\alpha F_\delta _{()}=:f_1(\epsilon ,\delta ).$$
(33)
Combining (31) and (33) we obtain

$$[H^\epsilon ,F_\delta ]=P_{}^{}\left(_xP_{}\right)P_{}+𝒪(Y_\delta ,f_1(\epsilon ,\delta )),$$
(34)
where in (34) and in the following $`𝒪(a,b,c,\mathrm{})`$ stands for a sum of operators whose norm in $`()`$ is bounded by a constant times $`a+b+c+\mathrm{}`$. Defining

$$B_\delta =F_\delta (Dh)^\epsilon P_{}\text{adj.},$$

one finds with h<sup>m</sup> (ii) and $`f_2(\delta )=F_\delta _{(,D(H_0))}`$ that

$`[H^\epsilon ,B_\delta ]`$ $`=`$ $`[H^\epsilon ,F_\delta ](Dh)^\epsilon P_{}+F_\delta [H^\epsilon ,(Dh)^\epsilon ]P_{}+F_\delta (Dh)^\epsilon [H^\epsilon ,P_{}]+\text{adj.}`$ (35)
$`=`$ $`P_{}^{}\left(_xP_{}\right)P_{}(Dh)^\epsilon +\text{adj.}+𝒪(\epsilon ,Y_\delta ,f_1(\epsilon ,\delta ),\epsilon f_2(\delta )).`$
Now the integrand in (2.2) can be written as the time-derivative of

$$A_\delta (s)=i\epsilon U^\epsilon (s)B_\delta U^\epsilon (s),$$

plus a remainder:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{ds}}A_\delta (s)`$ $`=`$ $`U^\epsilon (s)[H^\epsilon ,B_\delta ]U^\epsilon (s)`$ (36)
$`=`$ $`U^\epsilon (s)\left(P_{}^{}\left(_xP_{}\right)P_{}(Dh)^\epsilon P_{}+\text{adj.}\right)U^\epsilon (s)`$
$`+𝒪(\epsilon ,Y_\delta ,f_1(\epsilon ,\delta ),\epsilon f_2(\delta )).`$
Inserting (36) into (2.2) enables us to do integration by parts,

$`U^\epsilon (t)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (t)_{()}`$ (37)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑s\left({\displaystyle \frac{d}{ds}}A_\delta (s)\right)U^\epsilon (s)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (s)_{()}`$
$`+|t|𝒪(\epsilon ,Y_\delta ,f_1(\epsilon ,\delta ),\epsilon f_2(\delta ))`$
$``$ $`A_\delta (t)_{()}+A_\delta (0)_{()}`$
$`+{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑sA_\delta (s)\left({\displaystyle \frac{d}{ds}}U^\epsilon (s)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (s)\right)_{()}`$
$`+|t|𝒪(\epsilon ,Y_\delta ,f_1(\epsilon ,\delta ),\epsilon f_2(\delta ))`$
$``$ $`C\epsilon (2+|t|)F_\delta _{()}+|t|𝒪(\epsilon ,Y_\delta ,f_1(\epsilon ,\delta ),\epsilon f_2(\delta )).`$
For the last inequality in (37) we used that $`A_\delta (t)_{()}C\epsilon F_\delta _{()}`$ uniformly for $`t`$ and that

$$\frac{d}{ds}U^\epsilon (t_0,s)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (s,t_0)=\frac{i}{\epsilon }U^\epsilon (t_0,s)\left(H^\epsilon (s)H_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (s)\right)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (s,t_0)$$

is bounded uniformly, according to (27) and h<sup>m</sup> (i).

Writing out the various terms in (37) explicitly, we conclude that there is a constant $`C<\mathrm{}`$ such that

$`U^\epsilon (t)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (t)_{()}C\epsilon F_\delta _{()}+C|t|(\epsilon +Y_\delta _{()}`$ (38)
$`+\epsilon F_\delta _{(,D(H_0))}+\epsilon F_\delta _{()}+{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{m}{}}}\epsilon ^j\underset{|\alpha |=j}{sup}_x^\alpha F_\delta _{()}).`$
Hence we are left to establish bounds on $`F_\delta `$, on its derivatives and on $`Y_\delta `$ in terms of $`\delta `$, which is the content of the following Lemma.

###### Lemma 3.

Assume H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$, then $`F_\delta ()C_\mathrm{b}^m(M,(_\mathrm{f})^n)`$ and there is a constant $`C<\mathrm{}`$ such that for $`\delta (0,\delta _0]`$

$$F_\delta _{(,D(H_0))}\frac{C}{\delta }\eta (\delta ),$$
(39)
$$\underset{|\alpha |=j}{sup}_x^\alpha F_\delta _{()}\frac{C}{\delta ^{j+1}}\eta (\delta )\text{for}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}1}jm.$$
(40)
In case H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (i) holds, we have (39) and (40) with $`\eta (\delta )=1`$. Furthermore, if H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (i) holds, then $`lim_{\delta 0}Y_\delta _{()}=0`$ and if H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (ii) or (iii) holds, then $`Y_\delta _{()}C\eta (\delta )`$.

If H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (iii) holds, then (40) can be improved to

$$\underset{|\alpha |=j}{sup}_x^\alpha F_\delta _{()}\frac{C}{\delta ^j}\eta (\delta )\text{for}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}1}jm.$$
(41)
Before we turn to the proof of Lemma 3 we finish the proof of Theorem 1. Assuming H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (i), (22) follows by inserting the bounds from Lemma 3 into (38) and choosing $`\delta =\delta (\epsilon )`$ such that $`lim_{\epsilon 0}\delta (\epsilon )=0`$ and $`lim_{\epsilon 0}\epsilon /\delta (\epsilon )^2=0`$.

If H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (ii) holds, then the bounds (39) and (40) inserted into (38) yield

$$U^\epsilon (t)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (t)_{()}C\epsilon \frac{\eta (\delta )}{\delta }+C\left(\epsilon +\eta (\delta )+\epsilon \frac{\eta (\delta )}{\delta }+\underset{j=1}{\overset{m}{}}\epsilon ^j\frac{\eta (\delta )}{\delta ^{j+1}}\right)|t|.$$
(42)
In (42) the optimal choice is $`\delta (\epsilon )=\epsilon ^{\frac{1}{2}}`$, which gives (23). Finally, the bounds (39) and (41) inserted into (38) yield

$$U^\epsilon (t)U_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon (t)_{()}C\epsilon \frac{\eta (\delta )}{\delta }+C\left(\epsilon +\eta (\delta )+\epsilon \frac{\eta (\delta )}{\delta }+\underset{j=1}{\overset{m}{}}\epsilon ^j\frac{\eta (\delta )}{\delta ^j}\right)|t|,$$

where the optimal choice $`\delta (\epsilon )=\epsilon `$ gives (24).

###### Proof of Lemma 3.

We abbreviate $`R_{E(x)i\delta }(H_0(x))`$ as $`R(\delta ,x)`$ in this proof and note that $`R(\delta ,)C_\mathrm{b}^m(M,(_\mathrm{f}))`$ and thus $`F_\delta ()C_\mathrm{b}^m(M,(_\mathrm{f})^n)`$ follow from $`H_0()C_\mathrm{b}^m(M,(𝒟,_\mathrm{f}))`$ together with $`P_{}()C_\mathrm{b}^{m+1}(M,(_\mathrm{f}))`$.

We start with the case H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (ii), where (i) is included by making the obvious changes for $`\eta (\delta )=1`$. Assumption H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (ii) immediately yields

$$F_\delta _{()}\frac{C}{\delta }\eta (\delta )$$
(43)
and the bound on $`Y_\delta `$. (39) follows from $`H_0(x)R(\delta ,x)=\mathrm{𝟏}+(E(x)i\delta )R(\delta ,x)`$ and (43) together with the assumption that $`E(x)`$ is uniformly bounded.

For (40) we start by observing that

$`_xF_\delta (x)`$ $`=`$ $`R(\delta ,x)_x\left((_xP_{})(x)P_{}(x)\right)+\left(_xR(\delta ,x)\right)(_xP_{})(x)P_{}(x)`$
$`=`$ $`R(\delta ,x)_x\left((_xP_{})(x)P_{}(x)\right)R(\delta ,x)(_xH_0(x)_xE(x))F_\delta (x).`$
Using (43) and the fact that $`|_xE(x)|`$ is uniformly bounded by assumption, we infer from (2.2) that

$$|_xF_\delta |_{()}=\underset{xM}{sup}|_xF_\delta (x)|_{(_\mathrm{f})}C(\delta ^1+\delta ^2\eta (\delta )).$$

Hence (40) follows for $`j=1`$, since $`\delta \eta (\delta )`$ by assumption.

By differentiating (2.2) again, we find, using a reduced notation with obvious meaning, that

$$^{(2)}F_\delta =2R_\delta (H_0E)F_\delta +R_\delta ^{(2)}\left((P_{})P_{}\right)R_\delta (^{(2)}H_0^{(2)}E)F_\delta .$$
(45)
Hence $`^{(2)}F_\delta _{()}C(\delta ^3\eta (\delta )+\delta ^1+\delta ^2\eta (\delta ))`$ which proves (40) for $`j=2`$. By repeated differentiation one finds inductively (40) for $`jm`$.

To show (41) assuming H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (iii), note that (41) holds by assumption for $`j=1`$ and inserted into (45) it gives $`^{(2)}F_\delta _{()}C(\delta ^2\eta (\delta )+\delta ^1+\delta ^2\eta (\delta ))`$. Analogously the estimates for all larger $`jm`$ are improved by a factor of $`\delta `$. ∎

## 3 Effective dynamics for the massless Nelson model

As explained in the introduction, we consider $`N`$ spinless particles coupled to a scalar, massless, Bose field with an ultraviolet regularization in the interaction. This class of models is nowadays called Nelson’s model  after E. Nelson , who studied the ultraviolet problem. We briefly complete the introduction of the model and collect some basic, well known facts.

A point in the configuration space $`^{3N}`$ of the particles is denoted by $`x=(x_1,\mathrm{},x_N)`$ and the Hamiltonian $`H_\mathrm{p}^\epsilon `$ for the particles is defined in (5). $`H_\mathrm{p}^\epsilon `$ is self-adjoint on the domain $`H^1(^{3N})`$, the first Sobolev space.

The Hilbert space for the scalar field is the bosonic Fock space over $`L^2(^3)`$ defined in (6). On $`D(\sqrt{𝒩})`$, $`𝒩`$ the number operator, the annihilation operator $`a(f)`$ acts for $`fL^2(^3)`$ as

$$(a(f)\psi )^{(m)}(k_1,\mathrm{},k_m)=\sqrt{m+1}_^3𝑑k\overline{f}(k)\psi ^{(m+1)}(k,k_1,\mathrm{},k_m),$$

where $`\psi =(\psi ^{(0)},\psi ^{(1)},\psi ^{(2)},\mathrm{})D(\sqrt{𝒩})`$ if and only if $`_{m=0}^{\mathrm{}}m\psi ^{(m)}^2<\mathrm{}`$. The adjoint $`a^{}(f)`$, which is also defined on $`D(\sqrt{𝒩})`$, is the creation operator and for $`f,gL^2(^3)`$ the operators $`a(f)`$ and $`a^{}(g)`$ obey the canonical commutation relations (CCRs)

$$[a(f),a^{}(g)]=_^3dk\overline{f}(k)g(k)=:f,g,[a(f),a(g)]=[a^{}(f),a^{}(g)]=0.$$
(46)
It is common to write $`a(f)=_^3𝑑k\overline{f}(k)a(k)`$. The Hamiltonian of the field as defined in (7) can formally be written as

$$H_\mathrm{f}=_^3𝑑k|k|a^{}(k)a(k).$$

More explicitly, on the $`m`$-particle sector the action of $`H_\mathrm{f}`$ is $`(H_\mathrm{f}\psi )^{(m)}(k_1,\mathrm{},k_m)=_{j=1}^m|k_j|\psi ^{(m)}(k_1,\mathrm{},k_m)`$, and $`H_\mathrm{f}`$ is self-adjoint on its maximal domain. For $`fL^2(^3)`$ the Segal field operator

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(f)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(a(f)+a^{}(f)\right)$$

is essentially self-adjoint on $`D(\sqrt{𝒩})`$. The field operator $`\varphi `$ as used in (8) is related to $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ through $`\varphi (f)=\mathrm{\Phi }(f/\sqrt{|k|})`$. For the following it turns out to be more convenient to write the interaction Hamiltonian in terms of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, where

$$H_\mathrm{I}=\mathrm{\Phi }\left(|k|v(x,k)\right)$$

acts on the Hilbert space $`=L^2(^{3N})`$ of the full system. We will consider two different choices for $`v(x,k)`$ in more detail. For the standard Nelson model (SN), as discussed in the introduction, one has

$$v_{\mathrm{SN}}(x,k)=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}e^{ikx_j}\frac{\widehat{\rho }_j(k)}{|k|^{3/2}}.$$
(47)
For the infrared-renormalized models (IR), as considered by Arai  and, more generally, by Lörinczi, Minlos and Spohn , one has

$$v_{\mathrm{IR}}(x,k)=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\left(e^{ikx_j}1\right)\frac{\widehat{\rho }_j(k)}{|k|^{3/2}}.$$
(48)
In both cases, the charge distribution $`\rho _jL^1(^3)`$ of the $`j^{th}`$ particle is assumed to be real-valued and spherically symmetric. As to be discussed below, cf. Remarks 4 and 6, we have to assume the infrared condition (9) for the (SN) model, but not for the (IR) model. The infrared condition implies, in particular, that the total charge of the system of $`N`$ particles must be zero.

The full Hamiltonian is given as the sum

$$H^\epsilon =H_\mathrm{p}^\epsilon \mathrm{𝟏}+\mathrm{𝟏}H_\mathrm{f}+H_\mathrm{I}+V_{\mathrm{IR}}\mathrm{𝟏}$$
(49)
and is essentially self-adjoint on $`D(H_\mathrm{p}\mathrm{𝟏})D(\mathrm{𝟏}H_\mathrm{f})`$ if $`sup_x|k|^sv(x,k)_{L^2(^3)}<\mathrm{}`$ for $`s\{\frac{1}{2},1\}`$. Only in the (IR) model a potential $`V_{\mathrm{IR}}`$ is added, which acts as multiplication with the bounded, real-valued function

$$V_{\mathrm{IR}}(x)=\underset{j,i=1}{\overset{N}{}}_^3𝑑k\frac{\widehat{\rho }_j(k)\widehat{\rho }_i(k)^{}}{|k|^2}e^{ikx_j}+\frac{1}{2}_^3𝑑k\left|\frac{_{j=1}^N\widehat{\rho }_j(k)}{|k|}\right|^2.$$
(50)
###### Remark 4.

If the charge distributions satisfy the infrared condition (9), then the (SN) Hamiltonian and the (IR) Hamiltonian are related by the unitary transformation

$$U_\mathrm{G}=\mathrm{exp}\left(i\mathrm{\Phi }\left(i\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{\widehat{\rho }_j^{}(k)}{|k|^{3/2}}\right)\right),$$

cf. , which is related to the Gross transformation  for $`x=0`$. If the infrared condition is not satisfied, the (SN) model and the (IR) model carry two inequivalent representations of the CCRs for the field operators. Physically speaking, the transformation $`U_\mathrm{G}`$ removes the mean field that the $`N`$ charges would generate, if all of them would be moved to the origin. The vacuum in the (IR) representation corresponds to this removed mean field in the original representation, a fact which has to be taken care of in the interaction: for each particle the interaction term is now evaluated relative to the interaction at $`x=0`$, cf. (48), which makes also necessary the counter terms $`V_{\mathrm{IR}}`$. If the total charge of the system is different from zero, then the mean field is long range and, as a consequence, the corresponding transformation is no longer unitarily implementable. Indeed, it was shown that the (SN) Hamiltonian with confining potential does not have a ground state, cf. , while the (IR) Hamiltonian with the same confining potential does have a ground state, cf. . $`\mathrm{}`$

In order to apply Theorem 1 we observe that $`H_\mathrm{I}(x)`$ acts for fixed $`x^{3N}(M)`$ on $`(_\mathrm{f})`$ and with $`H_0(x)=H_\mathrm{f}+H_\mathrm{I}(x)+V_{\mathrm{IR}}(x)`$ we have

$$H^\epsilon =H_\mathrm{p}^\epsilon \mathrm{𝟏}+_M^{}𝑑xH_0(x)\left(h^\epsilon +H_0\right).$$

The following proposition collects some results about $`H_0(x)`$ and its ground state. Its proof is postponed to after the presentation of the the main theorem.

###### Proposition 5.

Assume that $`v(x,)L^2(^3)`$ for all $`x^{3N}`$ and that for some $`n1`$

1. $`||_x^\alpha v(x,)L^2(^3)`$ for all $`x^{3N}`$ and $`0|\alpha |n`$,
2. $`sup_{x^{3N}}\sqrt{||}_x^\alpha v(x,)_{L^2(^3)}<\mathrm{}`$ for $`0|\alpha |n`$,
3. $`sup_{x^{3N}}_x^\alpha v(x,)_{L^2(^3)}<\mathrm{}`$ for $`1|\alpha |n`$.

Let Im$`v(x,),_xv(x,)_{L^2(^3)}=0`$ for all $`x^{3N}`$ and $`V_{\mathrm{IR}}()C_\mathrm{b}^3(^{3N})`$. Then

* $`H_0(x)`$ is self adjoint on $`𝒟=D(H_\mathrm{f})`$ for all $`x^{3N}`$ and $`H_0()C_\mathrm{b}^n(^{3N},`$ $`(𝒟,))`$, where $`𝒟`$ is equipped with the graph-norm of $`H_\mathrm{f}`$.
* $`H_0(x)`$ has a unique ground state $`\mathrm{\Omega }(x)`$ for all $`x^{3N}`$ and, in particular,
$`H_0(x)\mathrm{\Omega }(x)=E(x)\mathrm{\Omega }(x)`$ for

$$E(x)=\frac{1}{2}_^3𝑑k|k||v(x,k)|^2+V_{\mathrm{IR}}(x).$$
(51)
Furthermore $`\mathrm{\Omega }()C_\mathrm{b}^n(^{3N},)`$.

It is straightforward to check that Im$`v(x,),_xv(x,)_{L^2(^3)}=0`$ for $`v_{\mathrm{SN}}`$ defined in (47) and $`v_{\mathrm{IR}}`$ defined in (48). For the (SN) model as well as for the (IR) model (51) is easily evaluated and one finds $`E(x)=E_0(x)`$ as given in (13).

###### Remark 6.

For the (SN) model the assumptions made on $`v(x,k)`$ in Proposition 5 are satisfied, if $`\widehat{\rho }_j(k)`$ decays sufficiently fast for large $`|k|`$ and each $`j=1,\mathrm{},N`$, or, equivalently, if $`\rho _j(x)`$ is sufficiently smooth. This is an ultraviolet condition individually for each particle. But $`v(x,)L^2(^3)`$ follows from $`v(0,)L^2(^3)`$, which is exactly the global infrared condition (9).

While the necessity for an ultraviolet regularization remains in the (IR) model, the infrared condition is replaced by $`_j|k|^{\frac{3}{2}}\widehat{\rho }_j(k)(e^{ikx_j}1)L^2(^3)`$, which can be satisfied without having $`_j\widehat{\rho }_j(0)=0`$. Thus the (IR) model allows us to consider particles with total charge different from zero. $`\mathrm{}`$

Let $`P_{}(x)=|\mathrm{\Omega }(x)\mathrm{\Omega }(x)|`$, then $`P_{}()C_\mathrm{b}^n(^{3N},())`$ and Ran$`P_{}`$ is a candidate for an adiabatically decoupled subspace. Indeed, we will show that $`h^\epsilon =H_\mathrm{p}^\epsilon \mathrm{𝟏}`$ satisfies Assumption h<sup>m</sup> with $`(Dh)_{x_j}^\epsilon =i\epsilon _{x_j}/\sqrt{\epsilon ^2\mathrm{\Delta }_{x_j}+1}`$ and that $`H_0`$ and $`P_{}`$ satisfy Assumption H$`{}_{0}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{m}`$ (iii) with $`\eta (\delta )=\delta \sqrt{\mathrm{ln}(1/\delta )}`$ if particles with charges different from zero are present and $`\eta (\delta )=\delta `$ if all particles have total charge zero. Hence we can apply Theorem 1 to conclude that for some constant $`C<\mathrm{}`$

$$e^{iH^\epsilon t/\epsilon }e^{iH_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon t/\epsilon }C\eta (\epsilon )(1+|t|),$$
(52)
with $`H_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon =P_{}H^\epsilon P_{}+(\mathrm{𝟏}P_{})H^\epsilon (\mathrm{𝟏}P_{})`$.

Next observe that the ground state band subspace Ran$`P_{}`$ is unitarily equivalent to the Hilbert space $`L^2(^{3N})`$ of the $`N`$ particles in a natural way. Let

$$𝒰:\mathrm{Ran}P_{}L^2(^{3N}),\psi (𝒰\psi )(x)=\mathrm{\Omega }(x),\psi (x)_{},$$
(53)
then it is easily checked that for $`\phi L^2(^{3N})`$

$$𝒰^{}\phi =𝒰^1\phi =_{^{3N}}^{}𝑑x\phi (x)\mathrm{\Omega }(x).$$

Hence the part of $`H_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon `$ acting on Ran$`P_{}`$ is unitarily equivalent to

$$\stackrel{~}{H}_{\mathrm{eff}}^\epsilon =𝒰P_{}H^\epsilon P_{}𝒰^{}$$

acting on the Hilbert space of the $`N`$ particles only. The following theorem shows that $`\stackrel{~}{H}_{\mathrm{eff}}^\epsilon `$ has, at leading order, exactly the form expected from the heuristic “Peierls substitution” argument.

###### Theorem 7.

Let $`H^\epsilon `$ be defined as in (49) with $`v(x,k)`$ either $`v_{\mathrm{SN}}(x,k)`$ as in (47) or $`v_{\mathrm{IR}}(x,k)`$ as in (48). For $`1jN`$ let $`\rho _jL^1(^3)`$ such that $`\widehat{\rho }_j`$ satisfies $`|k|^s\widehat{\rho }_j(k)L^2(^3)`$ for $`s\{1,4\}`$. For the (SN) model assume, in addition, the infrared condition (9). Let

$$H_{\mathrm{eff}}^\epsilon =H_\mathrm{p}^\epsilon +\underset{j=2}{\overset{N}{}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{j1}{}}V_{ij}(x_ix_j)+e_0,$$

with $`V_{ij}(z)`$ and $`e_0`$ as in (14) and (15). Then there is a constant $`C<\mathrm{}`$ such that

$$\left(e^{iH^\epsilon t/\epsilon }𝒰^{}e^{iH_{\mathrm{eff}}^\epsilon t/\epsilon }𝒰\right)P_{}C\eta (\epsilon )(1+|t|),$$
(54)
where $`\eta (\epsilon )=\epsilon \sqrt{\mathrm{ln}(1/\epsilon )}`$. If all charges satisfy the infrared condition individually, i.e. if $`\widehat{\rho }_j(k)/|k|^{3/2}L^2(^3)`$ for all $`j=1,\mathrm{},N`$, then (54) holds with $`\eta (\epsilon )=\epsilon `$.

For sake of better readability the global energy shift $`e_0`$ was, as opposed to (17), absorbed into the definition of $`H_{\mathrm{eff}}^\epsilon `$.

###### Remark 8.

The unitary $`𝒰`$ intertwines the position operator $`x\mathrm{𝟏}`$ on $`L^2(^{3N})`$ with the position operator $`x`$ on $`L^2(^{3N})`$ exactly and the momentum operator $`i\epsilon _x\mathrm{𝟏}`$ on $`L^2(^{3N})`$ with $`i\epsilon _x`$ on $`L^2(^{3N})`$ up to an error of order $`\epsilon `$. Thus one can directly read off the position distribution and approximately also the momentum distribution of the particles from the solution $`\psi (t)=e^{iH_{\mathrm{eff}}^\epsilon t/\epsilon }\psi _0`$ of the effective dynamics. It is not necessary to transform back to the full Hilbert space using $`𝒰^{}`$. $`\mathrm{}`$

###### Remark 9.

From the discussion of the introduction one expects, on physical grounds, that the energy lost through radiation is of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^3)`$ after times of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^1)`$. Hence the error of order $`𝒪(\epsilon \sqrt{\mathrm{ln}1/\epsilon })`$ in (54) is not optimal in the sense that the error does not correspond to emission of free bosons and thus to dissipation. Indeed, we expect that the situation is similar to adiabatic perturbation theory with gap, cf. . There should be a subspace Ran$`P_{}^\epsilon `$ which is $`\epsilon `$-close to Ran$`P_{}`$ and for which the analogous expression to (52) holds with an error of order $`𝒪(\epsilon ^{\frac{3}{2}})`$, possibly with a logarithmic correction. The corresponding effective Hamiltonian would then contain two additional terms of order $`\epsilon ^2`$, which, for the case of quadratic dispersion

$$H_\mathrm{p}^\epsilon =\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{\epsilon ^2}{2}\mathrm{\Delta }_{x_j}$$

for the particles, can be calculated using formula (47) in . As result we obtain for the Weyl symbol of the effective Hamiltonian including the momentum dependent Darwin term

$$H_{\mathrm{eff}}(p,q)=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{1}{2m_j^\epsilon }p_j^2+E(q)+\frac{\epsilon ^2}{2}\underset{j<i}{}_^3𝑑k\frac{(p_j\kappa )(p_i\kappa )}{|k|^2}e^{ik(q_jq_i)}\widehat{\rho }_j^{}(k)\widehat{\rho }_i(k)$$
(55)
with $`m_j^\epsilon =1/(1+\frac{\epsilon ^2}{2}e_j)`$ and

$$e_j=\frac{1}{4\pi }_{^3\times ^3}𝑑v𝑑w\frac{\rho _j(v)\rho _j(w)}{|vw|}$$

the electromagnetic mass. As explained above, for the rigorous justification of (55) a space-adiabatic theorem without gap but for rotated subspaces $`P_{}^\epsilon `$ is needed and thus it is beyond the scope of the present paper. $`\mathrm{}`$

Before proving Theorem 7 we make up for the

###### Proof of Proposition 5.

A standard estimate (cf. e.g.  Proposition 1.3.8) shows that for $`fL^2(^3)`$ and any $`a>0`$

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(f)\psi _{}^2aH_\mathrm{f}\psi _{}^2+\left(\frac{f/\sqrt{||}_{L^2(^3)}^4}{a}+2\right)\psi _{}^2.$$
(56)
Hence $`\mathrm{\Phi }(f)`$ is infinitesimally $`H_\mathrm{f}`$-bounded whenever $`f_{L^2(^3)}+f/\sqrt{||}_{L^2(^3)}<\mathrm{}`$. Then Kato-Rellich implies that $`H_0(x)`$ is self-adjoint on $`D(H_\mathrm{f})`$, since $`\sqrt{||}v(x,)L^2`$ is assumed. Using (i), (ii) and $`V_{\mathrm{IR}}()C_\mathrm{b}^n(^{3N})`$, we obtain from (56) that

$$_x^\alpha H_0(x)=\mathrm{\Phi }\left(|k|_x^\alpha v(x,k)\right)+_x^\alpha V_{\mathrm{IR}}(x)$$
(57)
is relatively bounded with respect to $`H_\mathrm{f}`$ for $`|\alpha |n`$. Moreover, (ii), (56) and (57) imply that $`H_0()C_\mathrm{b}^n(^{3N},(𝒟,))`$.

To compute the ground state energy $`E(x)`$ observe that from “completing the square” one finds

$$H_0(x)=_^3𝑑k|k|\left(a^{}(k)+\frac{v^{}(k,x)}{\sqrt{2}}\right)\left(a(k)+\frac{v(x,k)}{\sqrt{2}}\right)\frac{1}{2}_^3𝑑k|k||v(x,k)|^2+V_{\mathrm{IR}}(x).$$

It is well known that the map $`a(k)a(k)+v(x,k)/\sqrt{2}`$ comes from the unitary transformation $`U(x)=\mathrm{exp}\left(i\mathrm{\Phi }\left(iv(x,)\right)\right)`$, i.e.

$$U(x)a(f)U^{}(x)=a(f)+f,v(x,),$$
(58)
whenever $`v(x,)L^2`$. Equation (58) follows from the fact that $`[A,[A,B]]=0`$ implies $`[\mathrm{exp}(iA),B]=\mathrm{exp}(iA)[iA,B]`$ and the CCRs. Transformations of the form (58) are called Bogoliubov transformations.

Therefore $`H_0(x)=U(x)H_\mathrm{f}U^{}(x)+E(x)`$ with $`E(x)=\frac{1}{2}_^3𝑑k|k||v(x,k)|^2+V_{\mathrm{IR}}(x)`$. Since $`H_\mathrm{f}\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0`$ for the unique ground state $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=(1,0,0,\mathrm{})`$, we find

$$H_0(x)\mathrm{\Omega }(x)=E(x)\mathrm{\Omega }(x)\text{with}\mathrm{\Omega }(x)=U(x)\mathrm{\Omega }_0.$$

Next we need to take derivatives of $`U(x)`$ with respect to $`x`$. It follows from the CCRs (46) that for $`f,gL^2(^3)`$

$$[\mathrm{\Phi }(f),\mathrm{\Phi }(g)]=i\mathrm{Im}f,g,$$

and thus, by assumption, that $`_x\mathrm{\Phi }(iv(,x))=\mathrm{\Phi }(i_xv(,x))`$ commutes with $`\mathrm{\Phi }(iv(,x))`$. Hence we obtain that on $`D(\sqrt{𝒩})`$

$$_xU(x)=U(x)i\mathrm{\Phi }(i_xv(,x))=i\mathrm{\Phi }(i_xv(,x))U(x).$$
(59)
By further differentiating (59) we can get up to $`n^{th}`$ derivatives since $`_x^\alpha v(x,k)L^2(^3)`$ for $`|\alpha |n`$. In particular we find with (iii) that $`\mathrm{\Omega }(x)=U(x)\mathrm{\Omega }_0C_\mathrm{b}^n(^{3N},)`$. ∎

###### Proof of Theorem 7.

We start by showing that the assumptions of Theorem 1 are indeed satisfied and thus (52) follows.

It is straightforward to check that the assumptions on $`\widehat{\rho }_j`$ imply the assumptions of Proposition 5 for $`n=5`$. Hence the first part of H$`{}_{}{}^{4}{}_{0}{}^{}`$ follows with $`P_{}(x)=|\mathrm{\Omega }(x)\mathrm{\Omega }(x)|`$. For H$`{}_{}{}^{4}{}_{0}{}^{}`$ (iii) observe that, using (59), $`_x\mathrm{\Omega }(x)=_xU(x)\mathrm{\Omega }_0=U(x)i\mathrm{\Phi }(i_xv(,x))\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, and thus

$$\mathrm{\Omega }(x),_x\mathrm{\Omega }(x)_{}=\mathrm{\Omega }_0,i\mathrm{\Phi }(i_xv(,x))\mathrm{\Omega }_0_{}=0.$$
(60)
As a consequence, $`(_xP_{})(x)P_{}(x)=|_x\mathrm{\Omega }(x)\mathrm{\Omega }(x)|`$. Hence we obtain for $`1jN`$

$$R(\delta ,x)(_{x_j}P_{})(x)P_{}(x)=i|U(x)R_\mathrm{f}(\delta )\mathrm{\Phi }(i_{x_j}v(,x))\mathrm{\Omega }_0\mathrm{\Omega }(x)|,$$
(61)
where $`R_\mathrm{f}(\delta )=(H_\mathrm{f}i\delta )^1`$. For (20) one therefore finds

$`R(\delta ,x)(_{x_j}P_{})(x)P_{}(x)_{()}^2`$ $`=`$ $`R_\mathrm{f}(\delta )\mathrm{\Phi }(i_{x_j}v(x,))\mathrm{\Omega }_0_{}^2`$ (62)
$`=`$ $`(|k|i\delta )^1ke^{ikx_j}\widehat{\rho }_j(k)|k|^{\frac{3}{2}}_{L^2(^3)}^2`$
Whenever $`\rho _j`$ satisfies the infrared condition $`\widehat{\rho }_j(k)|k|^{\frac{3}{2}}L^2(^3)`$, (62) is bounded uniformly in $`\delta `$ since $`\left||k|/(|k|i\delta )\right|1`$. In general we only assume that $`\widehat{\rho }_j(k)|k|^1L^2(^3)`$. Using that $`\widehat{\rho }_j(k)`$ is bounded uniformly according to Riemann-Lebesgue, (62) becomes

$$(|k|i\delta )^1ke^{ikx_j}\widehat{\rho }_j(k)|k|^{\frac{3}{2}}_{L^2(^3)}^2C_1_0^1d|k|\frac{|k|}{|k|^2+\delta ^2}+C_2C\mathrm{ln}1/\delta ,$$
(63)
for $`\delta (0,\frac{1}{2}]`$. To obtain the estimate (21), we differentiate (61) and find

$`_{x_i}\left(R(\delta ,x)(_{x_j}P_{})(x)P_{}(x)\right)=i|U(x)R_\mathrm{f}(\delta )\mathrm{\Phi }(i_{x_j}v(x,))\mathrm{\Omega }_0_{x_i}\mathrm{\Omega }(x)|`$ (64)
$`|U(x)\mathrm{\Phi }(i_{x_i}v(x,))R_\mathrm{f}(\delta )\mathrm{\Phi }(i_{x_j}v(x,))\mathrm{\Omega }_0\mathrm{\Omega }(x)|`$
$`+i|U(x)R_\mathrm{f}(\delta )\mathrm{\Phi }(i_{ij}^{(2)}v(x,))\mathrm{\Omega }_0\mathrm{\Omega }(x)|.`$
All three terms in (64) can be bounded by using the same type of arguments as in (62) and (63): For the first term use in addition that $`_{x_i}\mathrm{\Omega }(x)__\mathrm{f}<C`$ and for the second term one has to estimate the components in the $`0`$-boson sector and in the $`2`$-boson sector separately. In summary we showed that H$`{}_{}{}^{4}{}_{0}{}^{}`$ (iii) is satisfied with $`\eta (\delta )=\delta \sqrt{\mathrm{ln}(1/\delta )}`$, and with $`\eta (\delta )=\delta `$ if all charges satisfy the infrared condition individually.

We are left to check for Assumption h<sup>4</sup>. Let $`h^\epsilon =H_\mathrm{p}^\epsilon \mathrm{𝟏}=_jh(i\epsilon _{x_j})\mathrm{𝟏}`$, with $`h(p)=\sqrt{p^2+1}`$. Essential self-adjointness of $`h^\epsilon +H_0`$ on $`D(H_\mathrm{p}\mathrm{𝟏})D(H_0)`$ is a standard result, cf. Proposition 2.1 in . We define $`(Dh)_j^\epsilon =(h)(i\epsilon _{x_j})\mathrm{𝟏}`$, with $`(Dh)^\epsilon _{()^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3}N}}1`$, and postpone the technical proof of the following Lemma to the end of this section.

###### Lemma 10.

$`h^\epsilon `$ and $`(Dh)^\epsilon `$ satisfy h<sup>4</sup> (i) and (ii).

We conclude that all assumptions of Theorem 1 are satisfied for the (SN) and the (IR) model and thus (52) holds. However, (54) follows from (52) by the following Lemma and an argument like (2.2). ∎

###### Lemma 11.

There is a constant $`C<\mathrm{}`$ such that for $`\epsilon >0`$ sufficiently small

$$\left(H_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon 𝒰^{}H_{\mathrm{eff}}^\epsilon 𝒰\right)P_{}_{()}\epsilon ^2C.$$

###### Proof.

In order to apply h<sup>4</sup> (i) to $`𝒰(x)`$, we have to extend $`𝒰(x):\text{Ran}P_{}(x)`$ defined in (53) to a map $`\stackrel{~}{𝒰}()C_\mathrm{b}^4(^{3N},())`$ first. To this end let $`\stackrel{~}{𝒰}(x)=|\mathrm{\Omega }_0\mathrm{\Omega }(x)|`$ and note that $`\stackrel{~}{𝒰}^{}\stackrel{~}{𝒰}=P_{}`$. With this definition one finds

$`H_{\mathrm{diag}}^\epsilon P_{}`$ $`=`$ $`H_0P_{}+P_{}h^\epsilon P_{}=EP_{}+P_{}\stackrel{~}{𝒰}^{}h^\epsilon \stackrel{~}{𝒰}P_{}+P_{}[h^\epsilon ,\stackrel{~}{𝒰}^{}]\stackrel{~}{𝒰}P_{}`$
$`=`$ $`𝒰^{}H_{\mathrm{eff}}^\epsilon 𝒰P_{}+P_{}[h^\epsilon ,\stackrel{~}{𝒰}^{}]\stackrel{~}{𝒰}P_{},`$
and we are left to show that $`P_{}[h^\epsilon ,\stackrel{~}{𝒰}^{}]\stackrel{~}{𝒰}P_{}=𝒪(\epsilon ^2)`$. Using h<sup>4</sup> (i) with $`A=\stackrel{~}{𝒰}^{}`$ we find that

$$P_{}[h^\epsilon ,\stackrel{~}{𝒰}^{}]\stackrel{~}{𝒰}P_{}=i\epsilon P_{}(_x\stackrel{~}{𝒰}^{})(Dh)^\epsilon \stackrel{~}{𝒰}P_{}+𝒪(\epsilon ^2).$$

However, according to (60)

$$P_{}(x)(_x\stackrel{~}{𝒰}^{})(x)=|\mathrm{\Omega }(x)\mathrm{\Omega }(x),_x\mathrm{\Omega }(x)\mathrm{\Omega }_0|=0,$$

and thus the desired result follows. ∎

###### Proof of Lemma 10.

Heuristically h<sup>4</sup> (i) and (ii) hold, because they are just special cases of the expansion of a commutator of pseudodifferential operators. However, since $`h^\epsilon `$ is unbounded and $`A`$ is only 4-times differentiable, we need to check the estimates “by hand”.

For notational simplicity we restrict ourselves to the case $`N=1`$, from which the general case follows immediately. Let $`g(p)=1/\sqrt{p^2+1}`$, $`g^\epsilon =g(i\epsilon _x)\mathrm{𝟏}`$ and $`AC_\mathrm{b}^4(^3,_\mathrm{f})`$, then $`||^s\widehat{g}L^1(^3)`$ for $`s\{0,4\}`$ and thus for $`\psi 𝒮`$

$`\left(g^\epsilon A\psi \right)(x)={\displaystyle 𝑑y\widehat{g}(y)A(x\epsilon y)\psi (x\epsilon y)}`$ (65)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑y\widehat{g}(y)\left(A(x)\epsilon yA(x)+\epsilon ^2_0^1𝑑sy,^{(2)}A(xs\epsilon y)y\right)\psi (x\epsilon y)}`$
$`=`$ $`\left(Ag^\epsilon \psi \right)(x)i\epsilon \left(Ag^\epsilon \psi \right)(x)`$
$`+{\displaystyle 𝑑y\widehat{g}(y)\epsilon ^2_0^1𝑑sy,^{(2)}A(xs\epsilon y)y\psi (x\epsilon y)}.`$
From (65) one concludes after a lengthy but straightforward computation involving several integrations by parts that

$$\epsilon ^2\mathrm{\Delta }_x[g^\epsilon ,A]=i\epsilon A(g)^\epsilon (\epsilon ^2\mathrm{\Delta }_x)+R$$

with

$$RC\underset{j=2}{\overset{4}{}}\epsilon ^j\underset{x^{3N},|\alpha |=j}{sup}_x^\alpha A(x)_{(_\mathrm{f})}.$$

Hence we find

$$[h^\epsilon ,A]=[(1\epsilon ^2\mathrm{\Delta }_x)g^\epsilon ,A]=(1\epsilon ^2\mathrm{\Delta }_x)[g^\epsilon ,A][\epsilon ^2\mathrm{\Delta }_x,A]g^\epsilon =i\epsilon A(Dh)^\epsilon +R^{}$$

with

$$R^{}C^{}\underset{j=2}{\overset{4}{}}\epsilon ^j\underset{x^{3N},|\alpha |=j}{sup}_x^\alpha A(x)_{(_\mathrm{f})}.$$

This proves h<sup>4</sup> (i). By the same type of arguments one shows also h<sup>4</sup> (ii). ∎

Acknowledgments. I am grateful to Herbert Spohn for suggesting the massless Nelson model as an application for a space-adiabatic theorem without gap, as well as for numerous valuable discussions, remarks and hints concerning the literature. Parts of this work developed during a stay of the author at the Univerité de Lille and I thank Stephan De Bièvre and Laurent Bruneau for hospitality and for a helpful introduction to Reference . For critical remarks which lead to an improved presentation a thank Detlef Dürr.