Morphing the shell model into an effective theory

We describe a strategy for attacking the canonical nuclear structure problem-bound-state properties of a system of point nucleons interacting via a two-body potential-which involves an expansion in the number of particles scattering at high momenta, but is otherwise exact. The required self-consistent solutions of the Bloch-Horowitz equation for effective interactions and operators are obtained by an efficient Green's function method based on the Lanczos algorithm. We carry out this program for the simplest nuclei, d and (3)He, in order to explore the consequences of reformulating the shell model as a controlled effective theory.