Many-particle systems: IV. Short-range interactions

Abstract

A method by Post, which has been used to calculate lower bounds on the energies of the lowest spatially symmetric or antisymmetric states of many-identical-particle systems, is shown to apply quite generally to the ground states of systems of bosons or fermions for any pair interactions whatever. In particular, the N-nucleon system is considered. No ordinary central pair potential was found to give the empirical binding energies of 2H, 3H and 4He. For the exponential and square-well potentials the calculated bounds on the energies are closer than 1% over wide ranges of the potential parameters. The method justifies and generalizes certain `equivalent two-body' calculations originated by Wigner.