On Scattering and Bound States for a Singular Potential

To understand the origin of the difficulties in the determination of the physical wavefunc­ tion for an attractive inverse square potential, we study a model in which the singularity at the origin is substituted by a repulsive core. The structure of the spectrum of energy levels is discussed in some detail. The physical interpretation of the solutions of the Schrodinger equation for a potential of the form - (-h 2 /2m) 11/ r 2 presents difficulties, which occur for 11 larger than (l + 1/2)\ where l is the angular momentum. The difficulties are due to the fact that the condition of square integrability usually imposed on the wavefunction is not sufficient in this case to determine phase shif…