WKB Treatment of Bound States in an Electric-Dipole Potential

Abstract
The WKB method is applied to the problem of bound states of an electron in the field of a finite dipole. A necessary condition for binding is derived which suggests that bound states may exist only if the dipole moment is larger than a certain minimum value. It is also shown that the number of bound states given by the WKB method is comparable to the exact number for the one- and three-dimensional square-well potentials.