When solving the scattering equation or solving the two-nucleon problem, it is convenient to rewrite the Schroedinger equation, due to the spherical symmetry of the Hamiltonian, in relative and center-of-mass coordinates. This will also define the quantum numbers of the relative and center-of-mass system and will aid us later in solving the so-called Lippman-Schwinger equation for the scattering problem.

We define the center-of-mass (CoM) momentum as $$ \mathbf{K}=\sum_{i=1}^A\mathbf{k}_i, $$ with \( \hbar=c=1 \) the wave number \( k_i=p_i \), with \( p_i \) the pertinent momentum of a single-particle state. We have also the relative momentum $$ \mathbf{k}_{ij}=\frac{1}{2}(\mathbf{k}_i-\mathbf{k}_j). $$ We will below skip the indices \( ij \) and simply write \( \mathbf{k} \)