On the existence of bound helium trimers by the equivalent two-body method

Abstract
The binding energies of the 3,4He trimers are computed for a range of realistic interatomic potentials using the equivalent two‐body method of Bodmer and Ali. We find a 4He trimer bound with a binding energy of about 0.25°K and a 3He trimer which is but loosely bound. We also confirm that the Hall–Post–Stenschke method gives poor lower bounds to the energy and that (4He)3 is large, having a root mean square interparticle spacing of 23 Å.