## Doctoral Dissertations

#### Title

Ground state of (16)O

Spring 1998

Dissertation

Physics

#### Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

We use the coupled cluster expansion (exp(S) method) to solve the many-body Schrodinger equation in configuration space in a configuration space of 35 $\hbar\omega.$ The Hamiltonian includes a nonrelativistic one-body kinetic energy, a realistic two-nucleon potential and a phenomenological three-nucleon potential. Using this formalism we generate the complete ground state correlations due the underlying interactions between nucleons. The resulting ground state wave function is used to calculate the binding energy, the one- and two-body densities for the ground state of $\sp{16}$O. The problem of center-of-mass corrections in calculating observables has been worked out by expanding the center-of-mass correction as many-body operators. For convergence testing purposes, we apply our formalism to the case of the harmonic oscillator shell model, where an exact solution exists. We also work out the details of the calculation involving realistic nuclear wave functions.