WAVE FUNCTIONS FOR NUCLEAR-STRUCTURE CALCULATIONS

A new approximation to the Bethe-Goldstone wave function is proposed, constructed from the two-nucleon potential as follows: The eigenstates of the interacting two-nucleon system with energy eigenvalues less than a certain cutoff energy span a subspace W of the Hilbert space representing the two-nucleon system. Our approximation to the Bethe-Goldstone wave function is the projection of the free two-nucleon wave function onto this subspace W. For a suitable choice of cutoff energy, this approximation has the qualitative healing properties expected of the exact Bethe-Goldstone wave function. Moreover, it permits an easy evaluation of reaction matrix elements. The approximation is also applied to the calculation of the reaction matrix elements in the sd shell of the harmonic-oscillator shell model. The nucleon-nucleon potential of Hamada and Johnston was used in our calculation. The resulting energy levels of O18 and F18 are similar to those obtained by Kuo and Brown. © 1969 The American Physical Society.