The oscillator representation and the stability of three-body Coulomb systems

Within nonrelativistic quantum mechanics the Wick-ordering method, called the oscillator representation, is suggested for calculating the energy spectrum for a wide class of potentials allowing the existence of a bound state. As test cases, anharmonic (V(r)=r ²) and screened Coulomb potentials are considered. In particular, the method is applied to three-body Coulomb systems to obtain the dependence of the bound-state energy on the masses and charges of the particles. The calculations of the bound-state energies for the moleculesH ^–=(pee),H ₂ ⁺ =(ppe), (e ^–e^–e⁺) and (pp), (dd), (dt) prove the accuracy of the zeroth approximation to be better than one per cent. For the three-body Coulomb system with charges +, –, – and arbitrary masses the region of stability is determined. For the systems (pe ^–C⁺), (A ⁺e^–e⁺), and (pB ^–e^–) the critical masses are calculated to beM _c=1.945m_e,M _A=4.350m_e andM _B=1.575m_e. It turns out that the system (pe ^–e⁺) is unstable.