Translationally Invariant Single Particle Picture of the Three-Nucleon System

An ansatz of a single particle picture, known for example from the shell model, has been used to construct a model wave function which is as close as possible to an exact three-body wave function. The exact wave function is obtained by solving the Faddeev equation with the Malfliet–Tjon potential. In order to judge the quality of the model wave function, we compare correlation functions of the model wave function and the exact solution. The correlation functions differ significantly at small distances but are close to each other for larger values of their arguments.