So now that my term's over, I've been brushing up on my quantum field theory, and I came across the following line in my textbook without any justification:
$$\frac{1}{4\pi^2}\int_m^{\infty}\sqrt{E^2-m^2}e^{-iEt}dE \sim e^{-imt}\text{ as }t\to\infty$$
Well, I can see intuitively that if most of the integral cancels out, the main contribution will be from the region $E\approx m$, since (under a coordinate transformation) that's the region of stationary phase. But I'm a mathematician, dangit, not a physicist, and I want this to be rigourous.
The Riemann-Lebesgue lemma, if I'm not mistaken, doesn't apply since $\sqrt{E^2-m^2}$ is unbounded as $E\to\infty$, and it certainly isn't $L^1$. And I guess I could shift the path of the integral off the real axis in the complex plane, but I don't see why that would be the right way to take the integral. The whole thing is giving me the heebie-jeebies, and I was hoping one of you folks could assuage my fears.
Clearly the integral as stated diverges, so one needs to regularize it. To that end, consider $t$ complex with small negative imaginary part, to ensure that it converges at $E\to\infty$.
The integral directly matches the following integral representation of the Bessel function of the second kind: $$ K_{\nu }(z)=\frac{\sqrt{\pi } z^{\nu } }{2^{\nu } \, \Gamma \left(\nu +\frac{1}{2}\right)} \, \int_1^{\infty } \left(t^2-1\right)^{\nu -\frac{1}{2}} e^{-z t} \, \mathrm{d}t $$ valid for $\mathfrak{Re}(\nu) > -\frac{1}{2}$ and $\mathfrak{Re}(z) > 0$.
Thus: $$ \frac{1}{4 \pi^2} \int_m^\infty \mathrm{e}^{-i t \mathcal{E}} \sqrt{ \mathcal{E}^2-m^2} \mathrm{d} \mathcal{E} = -i \frac{m}{4 \pi^2 t} K_1\left( i m t \right) $$ By means of regularization we proclaim that integral equal to the rhs even for real $t$. Expanding: $$ -i \frac{m}{4 \pi^2 t} K_1\left( i m t \right) = -i \frac{m}{8 \pi t} H_1(m t) + i \frac{m}{4 \pi t} \operatorname{sign}(t) J_1(m t) $$ This allows to conclude that for $t \to +\infty$, the expression is proportional to $\mathrm{e}^{-i m t} \frac{\mathrm{e}^{-i 3 \pi/4}}{8} \sqrt{m} (\pi t)^{-3/2}$