Quasipotential approach to the Coulomb bound state problem for spin-0 and spin-/sup 1///sub 2/ particles

A recently proposed local quasipotential equation is reviewed and applied to the electromagnetic interaction of a spin-0 and a spin-/sup 1///sub 2/ particle. The Dirac particle is treated in a covariant two- component formalism in the neighbourhood of the mass shell. The fine structure of the bound state energy levels and the main part of the Lamb shift (of order alpha /sup 5/In(1/ alpha ) are evaluated with full account of relativistic recoil effects (without using any inverse mass expansion). Possible relevance of the techniques developed in this paper to fine structure calculations for meso-atomic systems is pointed out. (14 refs).