The method of coherent correlated pairs is applied with a realistic effective Hamiltonian to the four-nucleon system. Three methods of solution are compared for ease of implementation and convergence rates. A Monte Carlo method yields the best upper bound within the coherent correlated pair space. The full variational treatment of the four-nucleon coherent correlated pair problem yields equations which have poor stability properties. An ansatz variational method proves to be rapidly convergent and yields results very close to those of the Monte Carlo method. The results for binding energy and the one body density distribution are compared with Hartree-Fock results using the same effective Hamiltonian in the same model space. As in previous soluble model applications the coherent correlated pair method provides a superior upper bound to the ground state energy.

• Received 4 October 1983

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.29.1069