Concept of transition-operator boson and its application to an exactly soluble model

In phenomenological descriptions of nuclear vibrations a close connection is implied or expressed between the most-collective transition operator and the harmonic-oscillator (boson) variables which are introduced to describe the collective motion. With the help of a widely used example - the monopole vibration model of Meshkov, Lipkin, and Glick - it is shown how this relationship suggests, for the microscopic case, a new and flexible class of boson representations. As shown, these are capable of yielding accurate descriptions of the system not only in the extremes of weak and strong coupling, but in the usually more inaccessible intermediate regions as well.