Planar Dirac electron in Coulomb and magnetic fields

Abstract

The Dirac equation for an electron in two spatial dimensions in the Coulomb and homogeneous magnetic fields is discussed. This is connected to the problem of the two-dimensional hydrogenlike atom in the presence of an external magnetic field. For weak magnetic fields, the approximate energy values are obtained by a semiclassical method. In the case with strong magnetic fields, we present the exact recursion relations that determine the coefficients of the series expansion of wave functions, the possible energies, and the magnetic fields. It is found that analytic solutions are possible for a denumerably infinite set of magnetic field strengths. This system thus furnishes an example of the so-called quasiexactly solvable models. A distinctive feature in the Dirac case is that, depending on the strength of the Coulomb field, not all total angular momentum quantum numbers allow exact solutions with wave functions in reasonable polynomial forms. Solutions in the nonrelativistic limit with both attractive and repulsive Coulomb fields are briefly discussed by means of the method of factorization.