Accumulation of three-body resonances above two-body thresholds

Abstract

We calculate resonances in three-body systems with attractive Coulomb potentials by solving the homogeneous Faddeev-Merkuriev integral equations for complex energies. The equations are solved by using the Coulomb-Sturmian separable expansion approach. This approach provides an exact treatment of the threshold behavior of the three-body Coulombic systems. We considered the negative positronium ion and, besides locating all the previously know $S$-wave resonances, we found a whole bunch of new resonances accumulated just slightly above the two-body thresholds. The way they accumulate indicates that probably there are infinitely many resonances just above the two-body thresholds, and this might be a general property of three-body systems with attractive Coulomb potentials.