Coulomb Fourier transformation: A novel approach to three-body scattering with charged particles

A unitary transformation of the three-body Hamiltonian which describes a system of two charged and one neutral particles is constructed such that the Coulomb potential which acts between the charged particles is explicitly eliminated. The transformed Hamiltonian and, in particular, the transformed short-range pair interactions are worked out in detail. Thereby it is found that, after transformation, the short-range potentials acting between the neutral and either one of the charged particles become simply Fourier transformed but, in addition, multiplied by a function that represents the Coulombic three-body correlations originating from the action of the other charged particle on the considered pair. This function which is universal as it does not depend on any property of the short-range interaction is evaluated explicitly and its singularity structure is described in detail. In contrast, the short-range potential between the charged particles remains of two-body type but occurs now in the "Coulomb representation." Specific applications to Yukawa and Gaussian potentials are given. Since the Coulomb-Fourier-transformed Hamiltonian does no longer contain the Coulomb potential or any other effective interaction of long range, standard methods of short-range few-body scattering theory are applicable.