Relativistic two-boson system in presence of electromagnetic plane waves

Abstract

The relativistic two-body problem is considered for spinless particles subject to an external macroscopic electromagnetic field. When this field is made of the monochromatic superposition of two counter-propagating plane waves (and provided the mutual interaction between particles is known), it is possible to write down explicitly a pair of coupled wave equations (corresponding to a pair of mass-shell constraints) which takes into account also the field contribution. These equations are manifestly covariant; constants of the motion are exhibited, so one ends up with a reduced problem involving five degrees of freedom.