Abstract

This paper studies the model of the quantum electrodynamics (QED) of a single nonrelativistic electron due to W. Pauli and M. Fierz and studied further by P. Blanchard. This model exhibits infrared divergence in a very simple context. The infrared divergence is associated with the inequivalence of the Hilbert spaces associated with the free Hamiltonian and with the complete Hamiltonian. Infrared divergences that are visible in the perturbative description disappear in the space of the clothed electrons. In this model when the Hamiltonian is expressed in terms of the “physical” fields that create the electron together with its cloud of soft photons, the variational principle suggested earlier can be applied. At finite time the Heisenberg field of the model acts in the space of the perturbative electron together with a finite number of perturbative photons, while the “physical” field can be chosen to act in the space of the exact (“physical”) electron eigenstates together with a finite number of physical photons. The space of the physical (or clothed) electron states can be chosen to be a Fock space