Facets of the spinless Salpeter equation

Abstract

The spinless Salpeter equation represents the simplest and most straightforward generalization of the Schroedinger equation of standard nonrelativistic quantum theory towards the inclusion of relativistic kinematics. Moreover, it can be also regarded as a well-defined approximation to the Bethe-Salpeter formalism for descriptions of bound states in relativistic quantum field theories. The corresponding Hamiltonian is, in contrast to all Schroedinger operators, a nonlocal operator. Because of the nonlocality, constructing analytical solutions for such kind of equation of motion proves difficult. In view of this, different sophisticated techniques have been developed in order to extract rigorous analytical information about these solutions. This review introduces some of these methods and compares their significance by application to interactions relevant in physics.