On the treatment of the center of mass motion in nuclear mean field theories

It is shown how the spurious components due to the center of mass motion can be eliminated from general Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov quasi-particle configurations with the help of projection techniques. The problem how to restore the additional symmetries being broken by such configurations is discussed. An explicit formulation is given for the spherical Hartree-Fock problem with center of mass momentum projection before the variation. As an example for the application of this method the ground state of 4He is studied using two different interactions, a microscopic two-body one as well as a phenomenological one including a Skyrme-type three-body force. The results are compared to those of the usual approximate treatment of the center of mass motion in Hartree-Fock calculations. It turns out that, at least for the chosen example, the latter yields a rather reasonable approximation to the correct total energy, single particle energy and even the mass density provided that it is calculated from a translationally invariant density operator. (orig.)