Abstract
The general structure of the scattering amplitude is expressed in terms of the one-particle reducible and irreducible parts, when there are several particles present having the same quantum numbers in the channel in addition to the physical and unphysical cuts. A comparison with field theory is made to obtain the propagator, the vertex functions, and the matrix of the wave-function renormalization constant Z in terms of the N and D functions of the ND method by making use of the Lehmann representation of the propagator. We then prove the equivalence between composite particles defined in the ND method and elementary particles with a singular matrix of the wave-function renormalization constant, i.e., detZ=0 in a full field theory under the approximation of keeping only up to the two-particle intermediate states. We show also that Z becomes singular when the one-particle reducible part A(s) of the scattering amplitude does not decrease as fast as s1 at high energies, i.e., Blimss1A1(s)=0. In particular, the condition B=0 so that detZ=0 makes all particles to become composites of other particles, while B0 but with detZ-0 allows mixture of the elementary and composite states. The one- and two-particle cases are discussed in detail to illustrate the compositeness condition detZ=0.