Weakly bound states of two- and three-boson systems in the crossover from two to three dimensions

Abstract

The spectrum and properties of quantum bound states is strongly dependent on the dimensionality of space. How this comes about and how one may theoretically and experimentally study the interpolation between different dimensions is a topic of great interest in different fields of physics. In this paper we study weakly bound states of non-relativistic two and three boson systems when passing continuously from a three (3D) to a two-dimensional (2D) regime within a 'squeezed dimension' model. We use periodic boundary conditions to derive a surprisingly simple form of the three-boson Schrodinger equation in momentum space that we solve numerically. Our results show a distinct dimensional crossover as three-boson states will either disappear into the continuum or merge with a 2D counterpart, and also a series of sharp transitions in the ratios of three-body and two-body energies from being purely 2D to purely 3D.