ANALYTIC CONTINUED FRACTION THEORY FOR A CLASS OF CONFINEMENT POTENTIALS

We study a general class of confinement potentials in Schrödinger theory using the analytic theory of continued fractions. We construct an infinite continued fraction representation for the Green's function and study its convergence, its analytic properties in the major coupling constant and its relation to the perturbation series. We prove the existence of normalizable confined state eigensolutions with equally spaced energy levels if certain constraints on the coupling constants of the theory are satisfied: we also show that under a separate set of constraints neither bound nor confined states exist. © 1979 D. Reidel Publishing Company.