Bethe-Salpeter and light-front bound state equations for three scalar particles interacting by scalar exchange-bosons are solved in ladder truncation. In contrast to two-body systems, the three-body binding energies obtained in these two approaches differ significantly from each other: the ladder kernel in light-front dynamics underbinds by approximately a factor of two compared to the ladder Bethe-Salpeter equation. By taking into account three-body forces in the light-front approach, generated by two exchange-bosons in flight, we find that most of this difference disappears; for small exchange masses, the obtained binding energies coincide with each other.
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