Construction of image spherical harmonics and Clebsch–Gordan coefficients Original Research Article

The image spherical harmonics form a natural basis for expansion of nuclear collective model angular wave functions. They underlie the recently-proposed algebraic method for diagonalization of the nuclear collective model Hamiltonian in an image basis. We present a computer code for explicit construction of the image spherical harmonics and use them to compute the Clebsch–Gordan coefficients needed for collective model calculations in an image-coupled basis. With these Clebsch–Gordan coefficients it becomes possible to compute the matrix elements of collective model observables by purely algebraic methods.