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I am going through the Peskin and Schroeder QFT book. While proving the Gell-Mann and Low theorem in chapter 4 of their book, the authors started with the equation \begin{equation} e^{-iHt}|0\rangle = e^{-iE_{0}t}| \Omega\rangle \langle \Omega | 0 \rangle + \sum_{n\ne0}e^{-iE_{n}t}| n\rangle \langle n | 0 \rangle \end{equation} And argued that for all the $n\ne0$ terms die out in the limit time $t$ send to $\infty$ in a slightly imaginary direction: $t \rightarrow \infty(1-i\epsilon)$. Which yields equation (4.27) namely

\begin{equation} | \Omega \rangle = \lim_{t \rightarrow \infty(1-i\epsilon)}\frac{e^{-iHt}|0\rangle}{e^{-iE_{0}t}\langle \Omega | 0 \rangle}\tag{4.27} \end{equation} I am confused about sending the time $t$ to $\infty$ in a slightly imaginary direction: $t \rightarrow \infty(1-i\epsilon)$. Is this something mathematically rigorous or just a purely mathematical artifact? I hope someone can enlighten me making this point clear.

Mass
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  • I think we'd need a bit of an explanation about what all those symbols represent – David Jun 16 '20 at 20:35
  • @David, All I interested in to know what happens when time t to ∞ in a slightly imaginary direction: – Mass Jun 16 '20 at 20:39
  • "slightly imaginary" is itself a slightly hard term to define. Are we working with some kind of "surreal" extension of the complex plane that allows for infinitesimals? In principle there's nothing wrong with the "algebra", but I'm not sure if the result is meaningful – David Jun 16 '20 at 20:43

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