Beyond Adiabatic Elimination: Systematic Expansions

We restate the adiabatic elimination approximation as the first term in a singular perturbation expansion. We use the invariant manifold formalism for singular perturbations in dynamical systems to identify systematic improvements on adiabatic elimination, connecting with well established quantum mechanical perturbation methods. We prove convergence of the expansions when energy scales are well separated. We state and solve the problem of hermiticity of improved effective hamiltonians.