Three-body treatment of Coulomb effects in the problem of long-range effective interactions

The problem of Coulomb scattering of a charged particle by a two-particle bound system, consisting of a charged and a neutral particle, is investigated in the integral-equation approach of rigorous three-body theory. The bound state of the two particles is provided by a short-range interaction chosen in the simplest form using anS-wave separable potential. The integral equation defining the effective potential of the interaction of the charged particle with the two-particle bound system is formulated. It is shown that the multiple Coulomb scattering of the involved charged particles generates a sequence of long-range terms in the effective potential. It turns out that the long-range effects of Coulomb scattering are partly cancelled. As a result the polarization potential does not contain the longest-ranged terms which decrease at large distances as ^–2 and ^–3.