Transformation Between Complex Scattering Length and Binding Energy

Abstract

The use of scattering length of particle-target interaction due to real- valued potential to study the bound states of the particle-target system is well known in nuclear and atomic physics. In view of the current interest in using eta-nucleus scattering length to infer the existence of eta-mesic nucleus, we derive general analytic expressions that relate the binding energy and half-width of an unstable bound state to the complex-valued scattering length due to the same particle-target interaction.