Confronting the Lippmann–Schwinger equation and the N/D method for coupled-wave separable potentials

We study a family of separable potentials with and without added contact interactions by solving the associated Lippmann–Schwinger equation with two coupled partial waves. The matching of the resulting amplitude matrix with the effective-range expansion is studied in detail. When a counterterm is included in the potential we also carefully discuss its renormalization. Next, we use the matrix $N/D$ method and study whether the amplitude matrices from the potentials considered admit an $N/D$ representation in matrix form. As a novel result we show that it is typically not possible to find such matrix representation for the coupled partial-wave case. However, a separate $N/D$ representation for each coupled partial wave — a valid option known in the literature — is explicitly implemented and numerically solved in cases where the matrix $N/D$ method is unavailable.