The Born-Oppenheimer approximation for a 1D 2+1 particle system with zero-range interactions

Abstract

We study the self-adjoint Hamiltonian that models the quantum dynamics of a one-dimensional (1D) three-body system consisting of a light particle interacting with two heavy ones through a zero-range force. For an attractive interaction we determine the behavior of the eigenvalues below the essential spectrum in the regime $\varepsilon\ll 1$, where $\varepsilon$ is proportional to the square root of the mass ratio. We show that the $n$-th eigenvalue behaves as $E_{n}(\varepsilon)=-α^{2}+|σ_{n}|α^{2}\varepsilon^{2/3}+O(\varepsilon)$, where $α$ is a negative constant that explicitly relates to the physical parameters and $σ_{n}$ is either the $n$-th extremum or the $n$-th zero of the Airy function Ai, depending on the kind (respectively, bosons or fermions) of the two heavy particles. Additionally, we prove that the essential spectrum coincides with the half-line $[-\frac{α^2}{4+\varepsilon^{2}},+\infty)$.