Boundary Conditions on Internal Three-Body Wave Functions

Abstract

For a three-body system, a quantum wave function $Ψ^\ell_m$ with definite $\ell$ and $m$ quantum numbers may be expressed in terms of an internal wave function $χ^\ell_k$ which is a function of three internal coordinates. This article provides necessary and sufficient constraints on $χ^\ell_k$ to ensure that the external wave function $Ψ^\ell_m$ is analytic. These constraints effectively amount to boundary conditions on $χ^\ell_k$ and its derivatives at the boundary of the internal space. Such conditions find similarities in the (planar) two-body problem where the wave function (to lowest order) has the form $r^{|m|}$ at the origin. We expect the boundary conditions to prove useful for constructing singularity free three-body basis sets for the case of nonvanishing angular momentum.