Forbidden states and the three-body bound state collapse

Abstract

The appearance of bound states with large binding energies of several hundred MeV in the three-body system, known as bound state collapse, is investigated. For this purpose three classes of two-body potentials are employed; local potentials equivalent to nonlocal interactions possessing a continuum bound state, in addition to the usual negative-energy bound state; local potentials with a strong attractive well sustaining a forbidden state; and supersymmetric transformation potentials. It is first shown that local potentials equivalent to the above nonlocal ones have a strong attractive well in the interior region which supports, in addition to the physical deuteron state, a second bound state (usually called a pseudobound state) with a large binding energy, which is responsible for the bound state collapse in the three-body (and in general to the N-body) system. Second, it is shown that local potentials with a forbidden state also generate a three-body bound state collapse, implying that the role played by the forbidden state is similar to the one played by the pseudobound state. Finally, it is shown that the removal of the forbidden state via supersymmetric transformations also results in the disappearance of the collapse. Thus one can safely argue that the presence of unphysical bound states with large binding energies in the two-body system is responsible for the bound state collapse in the three-body system.