Construction of the center-of-mass free space for the SU(3) no-core shell model

We address the removal of states with center-of-mass excitation from the SU(3) no-core shell model [SU(3)-NCSM] space, i.e., construction of the nonspurious subspace. A procedure is formulated based on solution of the null-space problem for the center-of-mass harmonic oscillator lowering operator Bcm, operating at the level of SU(3) irreducible representations. Isolation of the center-of-mass free subspace for the SU(3)-NCSM provides the foundation for exact removal of center-of-mass dynamics in the proposed Sp(3,R) symplectic no-core shell model. We outline the construction process for the matrix representation of Bcm, present the algorithm for obtaining the nonspurious space, and examine the dimensions obtained for center-of-mass free SU(3) subspaces in representative light nuclei.