Abstract
We investigated the bound-state spectrum of a particle with spin in the magnetic field of a thin current-carrying wire. We prove the existence of infinitely many bound states for any . The bound-state energies closely follow a Coulomb-like behavior with an effective angular momentum , suggesting a high adiabaticity of the system. Numerical results () are well approximated by a single simple formula for the quantum defect, which is more accurate than the approximations given in the literature. We find a qualitative disagreement with the result obtained by adiabatic approximation.
- Received 18 March 1996
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.54.R2525
©1996 American Physical Society