The projected single-particle Dirac operator for Coulombic potentials (Q2572489)

Summary: A sequence of unitary transformations is applied to the one-electron Dirac operator in an external Coulomb potential such that the resulting operator is of the form \(\Lambda_+ A\,\Lambda_+\,+\Lambda_-A\,\Lambda_-\;\) to any given order in the potential strength, where \(\Lambda_+\) and \(\Lambda_-\) project onto the positive and negative spectral subspaces of the free Dirac operator. To first order, \(\Lambda_+ A \,\Lambda_+\) coincides with the Brown-Ravenhall operator. Moreover, there exists a simple relation to the Dirac operator transformed with the help of the Foldy-Wouthuysen technique. By defining the transformation operators as integral operators in Fourier space it is shown that they are well-defined and that the resulting transformed operator is \(p\)-form bounded. In the case of a modified Coulomb potential, \( V=-\gamma x^{-1+\varepsilon}\), \(\varepsilon >0\), one can even prove subordinacy of the \(n\)-th order term in \(\gamma\) with respect to the \(n-1\)st order term for all \(n>1\), as well as their \(p\)-form boundedness with form bound less than one.