Relativistic correction to the binding energy of four or more nucleons

We derive an expression for the mass operator of a multinucleon system in the 1/c2 approximation starting from relativistic invariance, separability, and consistency with quantum field theory in the 1/c2 approximation. The result for three-body interactions is different from the result obtained by Coester. We show that the relativistic correction to the binding energy is completely determined by the binding energy and by the Faddeev components of the wave function for the corresponding nonrelativistic problem