Abstract
The techniques of center of mass (c.m.) separation in a homogeneous magnetic field are tested on an exactly solvable problem: a bound system of arbitrary particles interacting with a general quadratic potential. An effective mass increasing with the field strength appears naturally in the collective energy and shows striking similarities for charged and neutral systems. In the charged case, the internal motion cannot be separated from the c.m. motion. These properties and several techniques discussed in the present paper are also valid for a Coulomb interaction. The present exact model provides a test of approximate separation methods employed in the Coulomb case.

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