Perturbative description of nuclear double beta decay transitions

A consistent treatment of intrinsic and collective coordinates is applied to the calculation of matrix elements describing nuclear double beta decay transitions. The method, which was developed for the case of nuclear rotations, is adapted to include isospin and number of particles degrees of freedom. It is shown that the uncertainties found in most models, in dealing with these decay modes, are largely due to the mixing of physical and spurious effects in the treatment of isospin dependent interactions.