The general formulation of a technically advantageous method to find the gr
ound state solution of the Schrodinger equation in configuration space for
systems with a number of particles A greater than 4 is presented. The wave
function is expanded in pair-correlated hyperspherical harmonics beyond the
lowest order approximation and then calculated in the Faddeev approach. A
recent efficient recursive method to construct antisymmetric A-particle hyp
erspherical harmonics is used. The accuracy is tested for the bound state e
nergies of nuclei with A = 6-12. The high quality of the obtained results b
ecomes evident from a comparison with other approaches. (C) 1999 Published
by Elsevier Science B.V.