Numerical Solution of the Spinor Bethe-Salpeter Equation and the Goldstein Problem

The spinor Bethe-Salpeter equation describing bound states of a fermion-antifermion pair with massless-boson exchange reduces to a single (uncoupled) partial differential equation for special combinations of the fermion-boson couplings. For spinless bound states with positive or negative parity this equation is a generalization to nonvanishing bound-state masses of the equations studied by Kummer and Goldstein, respectively. In the tight-binding limit the Kummer equation has a discrete spectrum, in contrast to the Goldstein equation, while for loose binding only the generalized Goldstein equation has a nonrelativistic limit. For intermediate binding energies the equations are solved numerically. The generalized Kummer equation is shown to possess a discrete spectrum of coupling constants for all bound-state masses. For the generalized Goldstein equation a discrete spectrum of coupling constants is found only if the binding energy is smaller than a critical value.