Elementary Particle Theory of Composite Particles

Any nonrelativistic theory may be rewritten by introducing fictitious elementary particles with arbitrary properties. No physical predictions are affected, provided that the interaction part of the Hamiltonian is correspondingly modified. The fictitious elementary particle provides a good representation of a real composite particle if the modified interaction is sufficiently weakened for perturbation theory to work. It corresponds to a truly elementary particle with infinite bare mass, and hence with Z=0. We show how the latter condition yields a sum rule for the coupling of a composite particle to its constituents as a function of energy. The sum rule can be used to evaluate such coupling constants as that for the proton-electron-hydrogen vertex. The mathematical method used is that developed by Schmidt for the study of the Fredholm equation, and corresponds to the extraction of a single factor from the full Fredholm determinant.