Note on relativistic coulomb wave functions

Some results on the wave functions of a Dirac particle in a point charge Coulomb field are presented. Angular momentum and parity eigenfunctions are tabulated and used to construct solutions representing asymptotically a plane wave plus incoming or outgoing spherical waves. The solutions forr → 0 are exhibited in a form closely similar to the corresponding free particle spinors and are used to construct generalizations of the Casimir projection operators for positive or negative energy particles. The various wave functions presented are useful in calculations such as nuclear beta decay in which it is necessary to take into account final (or initial) state Coulomb interactions. Because of the similarity of the wave functions to those of a free particle, calculations including rigorously all Coulomb corrections for such processes as allowed beta decay can be performed with little more effort than is involved in a calculation using only plane waves.