Universal bound states and resonances with Coulomb plus short-range potentials

Abstract

We study charged particles in three dimensions interacting via a short-range potential in addition to the Coulomb potential. When the Bohr radius and the scattering length are much larger than the potential range, low-energy physics of the system becomes independent from details of the short-range potential. We develop the zero-range theory to describe such universal physics in terms of the Bohr radius and the scattering length by generalizing the Bethe-Peierls boundary condition, which is then applied to two charged particles to reveal their bound states and resonances. Infinite resonances are found for a repulsive Coulomb potential, one of which turns into a bound state with increasing inverse scattering length, whereas infinite bound states exist for an attractive Coulomb potential with no resonances at any scattering length. The zero-range theory is also applied to three equally charged particles at infinite scattering length under the variational Born-Oppenheimer approximation. We find that the effective potential between two heavy particles induced by a light particle is an inverse-square attraction at distances shorter than the Bohr radius, leading to infinite deep bound states, whereas shallow ones successively turn into resonances with increasing Coulomb repulsion.

Comments: 9 pages, 5 figures; (v2) expanded by adding relevance to nuclear systems and new Sec$.$IV on three charged particles; (v3) published version