On the virtual level of two-body interactions and applications to three-body systems in higher dimensions

Abstract

We consider a system of three particles in dimension 4 and higher interacting via short-range potentials, where the two-body Hamiltonians have a virtual level at the bottom of the essential spectrum. In dimensions 2 (in case of fermions) and 3 the corresponding three-body Hamiltonian admits an infinite number of bound states, which is known as the Efimov effect. In this work we prove that this is not the case in higher dimensions. We investigate how the dimension and symmetries of the system influence this effect and prove the finiteness of the discrete spectrum of the corresponding three-body Hamiltonian.