Center-of-Mass Motion in Many-Particle Systems

Abstract

An explicit construction is found for a unitary operator which insures the free motion of the center of mass of any many-particle wave function on which it is allowed to act. The transformation is used to calculate recoil correction terms for the internal energy and external interactions of nuclei, and some numerical evaluations are given for cases of interest. The many-body harmonic-oscillator problem is exactly soluble when one uses the transformation, and one is thus enabled to give a more general discussion of the spurious states.