Planar Dirac Electron in Coulomb and Magnetic Fields: a Bethe ansatz approach

Abstract

The Dirac equation for an electron in two spatial dimensions in the Coulomb and homogeneous magnetic fields is an example of the so-called quasi-exactly solvable models. The solvable parts of its spectrum was previously solved from the recursion relations. In this work we present a purely algebraic solution based on the Bethe ansatz equations. It is realised that, unlike the corresponding problems in the Schr\"odinger and the Klein-Gordon case, here the unknown parameters to be solved for in the Bethe ansatz equations include not only the roots of wave function assumed, but also a parameter from the relevant operator. We also show that the quasi-exactly solvable differential equation does not belong to the classes based on the algebra $sl_2$.