Angular-radial integrability of Coulomb-like potentials in Dirac equations

Abstract

We consider the Dirac equation, written in polar formalism, in the presence of general Coulomb-like potentials, that is, potentials arising from the time component of the vector potential and depending only on the radial coordinate, in order to study the conditions of integrability, given as some specific form for the solution: we find that the angular dependence can always be integrated, while the radial dependence is reduced to finding the solution of a Riccati equation so that it is always possible, at least in principle. We exhibit the known case of the Coulomb potential and one special generalization as examples to show the versatility of the method.