The Yukawa potential: Ground state energy and critical screening

Abstract

We study the ground state energy and the critical screening parameter of the Yukawa potential in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. After a short review of the existing literature on these quantities, we apply fifth-order perturbation theory to the calculation of the ground state energy, using the exact solutions of the Coulomb potential together with a cutoff on the principal number summations. We also perform a variational calculation of the ground state energy using a Coulomb-like radial wave function and the exact solution of the corresponding minimization condition. For not too large values of the screening parameter, close agreement is found between the perturbative and variational results. For the critical screening parameter, we devise a novel method that permits us to determine it to 10 digits. This is the most precise calculation of this quantity to date, and allows us to resolve some discrepancies between previous results.