The Hartree-Fock Method Applied to Helium's Electrons

The difficulties of applying the Hartree-Fock method to many body problems is illustrated by treating Helium's electrons up to the point where tractability vanishes. Second, the problem of applying Hartree-Fock methods to the helium atom's electrons, when they are constrained to remain on a sphere, is revisited. The 6-dimensional total energy operator is reduced to a 2-dimensional one, and the application of that 2-dimensional operator in the Hartree-Fock mode is discussed.