We consider a way of defining quantum Hamiltonians involving particle creation and annihilation based on an interior–boundary condition (IBC) on the wave function, where the wave function is the particle–position representation of a vector in Fock space, and the IBC relates (essentially) the values of the wave function at any two configurations that differ only by the creation of a particle. Here we prove, for a model of particle creation at one or more point sources using the Laplace operator as the free Hamiltonian, that a Hamiltonian can indeed be rigorously defined in this way without the need for any ultraviolet regularization, and that it is self-adjoint. We prove further that introducing an ultraviolet cutoff (thus smearing out particles over a positive radius) and applying a certain known renormalization procedure (taking the limit of removing the cutoff while subtracting a constant that tends to infinity) yields, up to addition of a finite constant, the Hamiltonian defined by the IBC.
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