《O4 Expansion of the Ladder Bethe-Salpeter fulltext》.pdf

Few-Body Systems 21, 167–185 (1996) Springer-Verlag 1996 Printed in Austria Oð4Þ Expansion of the Ladder Bethe-Salpeter Equation T. Nieuwenhuis and J. A. Tjon Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Utrecht, Princetonplein 5, P.O. Box 80.006, NL-3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands. Abstract. The Bethe-Salpeter amplitude is expanded on a hyperspherical basis thereby reducing the original four-dimensional integral equation into an infinite set of coupled one-dimensional ones. It is shown that this representation offers a highly accurate method to determine numerically the bound state solutions. For generic cases only a few hyperspherical waves are needed to achieve convergence, both for the ground state as well as for radially or orbitally excited states. The wave function is reconstructed for several cases and in particular it is shown that it becomes independent of the relative time in the nonrelativistic regime. 1 Introduction Over the past 40 years the Bethe-Salpeter equation has been the traditional starting point for relativistic field-theoretical studies of two-body bound states [1–3]. In view of the numerical complexity, most studies are restricted to the ladder approximation. Within this approximation the two-body amplitude obeys a 4-dimensional integral equation that can easily be transformed into a Fredholm-type eigenvalue problem by a Wick rotation [4]. Except for the Wick-Cutkosky model [4, 5], where two scalar particles interact through the exchange of a massless particle, very limited analytically obtained information is known about the solutions of the ladder Bethe-Salpeter equation. Moreover, despite its fairly transparent structu