Bound states for square well potentials extending to infinity in D ≥ 2

It is well known that quantum mechanics allows the penetration into classically forbidden regions (tunneling). Less well known seems to be the fact that in some sense the converse is true also. Potentials with classically allowed regions where a particle can move freely to infinity can nevertheless lead to bound states in quantum mechanics due to the stringent requirements of the boundary conditions, thus forbidding an escape to infinity. This effect is demonstrated by using an obvious generalization of the well known one-dimensional (D = 1) square well potential to arbitray space dimensions. (author)