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Non-symmetrized hyperspherical harmonic basis for $A$-bodies

The use of the hyperspherical harmonic (HH) basis in the description of bound states in an $A$-body system composed by identical particles is normally preceded by a symmetrization procedure in which the statistic of the system is taken into account. This preliminary step is not strictly necessary; the direct use of the HH basis is possible, even if the basis has not a well defined behavior under particle permutations. In fact, after the diagonalization of the Hamiltonian matrix, the eigenvectors reflect the symmetries present in it. They have well defined symmetry under particle permutation and the identification of the physical states is possible, as it will be shown in specific cases. The problem related to the large degeneration of the basis is circumvented by constructing the Hamiltonian matrix as a sum of products of sparse matrices. This particular representation of the Hamiltonian is well suited for a numerical iterative diagonalization, where only the action of the matrix on a vector is needed. As an example we compute bound states for systems with $A=3-6$ particles interacting through a short-range central interaction. We also consider the case in which the potential is restricted to act in relative s-waves with and without the inclusion of the Coulomb potential. This very simple model predicts results in qualitative good agreement with the experimental data and it represents a first step in a project dedicated to the use of the HH basis to describe bound and low energy scattering states in light nuclei.