Unified path integral treatment for generalized Hulthén and Woods-Saxon potentials (Q996355)

The description of interaction in areas such as nuclear, atomic and molecular physics is often simplified by choosing an approximating two-body potential. One of these potentials with four parameters has been suggested by Jiu-Xun Sun since 1999. It generalizes the standard Hulthén, Wood-Saxon and Morse potentials which have merrits of their own. The present paper was stimulated by previous suspicious looking and unconvincing results regarding the bound state problem which were obtained by the so-called shape invariance approach and the supersymmetric WKB quantization method. In fact, the results presented in this article differ in many ways. They are obtained from a rigorous path integral discussion, whereby a closed form of the Green function is obtained. When the parameters are in a certain range, the energy spectrum and the eigenfunctions are derived. In other cases a numerical solution of certain transcendental equations is required.