Orthogonality Catastrophe Revisited

Abstract

We prove a simple theorem on the overlap of the wavefunctions of a manybody system with and without a single impurity and show how, and under which conditions, this leads to the ``Orthogonality Catastrophe'' (OC) described by Anderson. A compact new derivation of the known result for the OC exponent in a free electron gas, $\alpha=2 \sum_l(2l+1) (\delta_l(\epsilon_f)/\pi)^2 $ %$\alpha = 2\sum_l [2l+1] (\delta_l(\epsilon_f)/\pi)^2$, is given. We also introduce a simple way of calculating core level photoemission (XPS) lineshapes from the finite size scaling of groundstate energies, reproducing and extending results previously derived using boundary conformal field theory. Different conditions under which the OC fails are discussed, and simple physical predictions for XPS lineshapes made in each case.