Bound-state thresholds of a spherical square well Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
For a spherical square well of radius , depth and reduced mass , the regular zero-orbital angular momentum solution has reduced radial wavefunction inside and outside. Wavefunction matching at a finite potential step gives , where and . The th radial branch first reaches at , for . A normalizable negative-energy state on that branch requires . Thus exactly one such state exists for ; the new zero-energy -wave solution at the upper equality is not normalizable.
For the first branch, the zero-energy exterior solution has . The regular interior solution is , where is a Spherical Bessel function. Matching logarithmic derivatives gives , or , with . Its first threshold is , so . Higher values of orbital angular momentum increase the positive centrifugal potential, so none can bind below this first -wave threshold. Spin-dependent nuclear forces are absent from this central-well model.
The exact spherical square well matching equation is . For near a threshold peak, neglecting relative to the chosen scattering phase shift and replacing by gives . Its maxima approach the S-wave bound-state threshold in a spherical square well. Its formal zeros at are outside that approximation's validity: the exact zero-energy scattering length is then , whereas genuine leading-order zeros satisfy .
The asymptotic scattering wavefunction is . For a real central potential, the scattering phase shift multiplies the outgoing component of each partial wave relative to the incoming one by . Matching the incident-wave normalization gives
Subtract the given incident plane wave expansion. Since , the scattering amplitude is
Orthogonality eliminates cross terms in , giving .
For the spherical square well, the regular reduced radial wave is inside and outside, with . Continuity of the wave and its derivative gives the logarithmic-derivative matching relation , or
At zeros of the denominators the original matching relation supplies the limiting interpretation.
Under the stated deep-well approximation, put and . The condition is . If , its first positive solution lies in ; if , it is . For , a solution lies in because there rises continuously from zero to infinity. If , the first positive solution lies in , where rises from one to infinity. The limiting pole case gives by the cotangent relation. Thus , without calculating the integer phase index. The use of presumes the located wave numbers remain small compared with .
Use the relative coordinate and reduced mass
Take inside, outside, and . For , define inverse lengths
The radial equation becomes inside and outside. Finiteness of the full wavefunction at the origin imposes ; normalizability excludes the growing exterior exponential. Hence
Continuity of was built in. Continuity of its derivative at the finite step gives
For the nodeless ground state, selects the first branch. Higher roots would correspond to different wells with more bound states. Normalization is
For the requested weak-binding estimate, makes . On the first branch , and . The leading threshold estimate is
This is the zero-binding threshold of a spherical square well, so nonzero positive binding needs a depth above it. Corrections start at order , not just at order : setting gives and
The actual numbers permit an accuracy check: and are not extremely small. Retaining the exterior decay, solve
This gives , and the full square-well result is
Neglecting only in the interior kinetic relation while retaining the measured exterior decay instead estimates . These approximations should be identified: 23.2 MeV is the leading threshold, whereas matching the supplied nonzero binding requires a boundary phase shift and a deeper well.
Figure 1.
A weakly bound radial state extends beyond the finite nuclear well
. Original calculation from the stated masses, radius and binding. The reduced radial function is normalized with and matches its derivative at the well edge. The central-well model omits the tensor-induced D component. Details.
Spherical square well 2026-10-14
A spherical square well is a central potential equal to a negative constant inside a sphere and zero outside it. For an S-wave scattering state with exterior wave number , the interior wave number obeys . Continuity of the reduced radial wave and its derivative gives , relating the depth to the scattering phase shift.
Spherical square-well scattering length Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
For an attractive spherical square well, let . At zero energy, the outer reduced radial wave is proportional to and the regular inner wave to . Matching their logarithmic derivatives gives . Away from a threshold and at sufficiently low energy, the total S-wave scattering scattering cross-section tends to . The length can be negative, zero or divergent.