Fermionic bound states in Minkowski space: light-cone singularities and structure

Abstract

Abstract The Bethe–Salpeter equation for two-body bound system with spin 1/2 constituent is addressed directly in the Minkowski space. In order to accomplish this aim we use the Nakanishi integral representation of the Bethe–Salpeter amplitude and exploit the formal tool represented by the exact projection onto the null-plane. This formal step allows one (i) to deal with end-point singularities one meets and (ii) to find stable results, up to strongly relativistic regimes, which settle in strongly bound systems. We apply this technique to obtain the numerical dependence of the binding energies upon the coupling constants and the light-front amplitudes for a fermion–fermion $$0^+$$ 0 + state with interaction kernels, in ladder approximation, corresponding to scalar-, pseudoscalar- and vector-boson exchanges, respectively. After completing the numerical survey of the previous cases, we extend our approach to a quark–antiquark system in $$0^-$$ 0 - state, taking both constituent-fermion and exchanged-boson masses, from lattice calculations. Interestingly, the calculated light-front amplitudes for such a mock pion show peculiar signatures of the spin degrees of freedom.