An application of boson second quantization techniques to the calculation of electron scattering form factors

It is suggested that boson second quantization, in terms of harmonic oscillator bosons, may be much more useful than its fermion counterpart for shell-model calculations in an LS coupled basis. The bosons carry the fundamental representation of SU(3). The combined set of boson creation and annihilation operators also carry the fundamental representation of Sp(3, R). Boson second quantization therefore provides a mechanism for expressing operators in terms of SU(3) and Sp(3, R) irreducible tensors. This is of major importance for shell-model calculations in an SU(3) basis and for the development of the symplectic shell model. Applications are made to the calculation of electron scattering form factors and it is shown how major simplifications arise when the space is restricted to a single major shell. For example, longitudinal form factors for 0 → 2 transitions in the sd-shell are shown to depend on just three parameters while the corresponding transverse form factors are uniquely determined up to an overall multiplicative constant. Further simplifications result on restriction to a single SU(3) irreducible representation.