A New Basis for QED Bound State Computations

Abstract

A simple method to compute QED bound state properties is presented, in which binding energy effects are treated non-perturbatively. It is shown that to take the effects of all ladder Coulomb photon exchanges into account, one can simply perform the derivative of standard QED amplitudes with respect to the external momentum. For example, the derivative of the light-by-light scattering amplitude gives an amplitude for orthopositronium decay to three photons where any number of Coulomb photon exchanges between the e-e+ is included. Various applications are presented. From them, it is shown that binding energy must be treated non-perturbatively in order to preserve the analyticity of positronium decay amplitudes. Interesting perspectives for quarkonium physics are briefly sketched.