Ground state wave functions in the hyperspherical formalism for nuclei with A > 4

The general formulation of a technically advantageous method to find the ground state solution of the Schrodinger equation in configuration space for systems with a number of particles A greater than 4 is presented. The wave function is expanded in pair-correlated hyperspherical harmonics beyond the lowest order approximation and then calculated in the Faddeev approach. A recent efficient recursive method to construct antisymmetric A-particle hyperspherical harmonics is used. The accuracy is tested for the bound state energies of nuclei with A = 6-12. The high quality of the obtained results becomes evident from a comparison with other approaches. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.