Princeton University Press eBooks
The Jost Solutions: Technical Details
John A. Adam
Abstract
This chapter discusses the technical details of the Jost solutions of the Schrödinger equation. The nonrelativistic quantum mechanical two-body problem can be described in terms of the Jost functions and Jost solutions of the Schrödinger equation. When defined for all complex values of the momentum, the Jost functions contain complete information about the underlying physical system. Compared to the S-function which may have redundant poles, the Jost function is a more fundamental quantity because it does not suffer from ambiguities caused by redundant zeros. The chapter first considers the time-independent radial Schrödinger equation before analyzing the regular solution for the Jost function, the poles of the S-matrix, and the wavepacket approach.