(The effective potential – the term in square brackets-is shown in Figure 4.5.

)
Our problem is to solve this equation for u(r), and determine the allowed energies.
The hydrogen atom is such an important case that I’m not going to hand you the
solutions this time – we’ll work them out in detail,
by the method we used in the analytical solution to the harmonic oscillator.
Incidentally, the Coulomb potential (Equation 4.52) admits continuum states (with
E>0), describing electron-proton scattering, as well as discrete bound states,
representing the hydrogen atom, but we shall confine our attention to the latter.