Lie algebra projectors and the kinematics of collective motions

Direct-sum decompositions of the Euclidean space of particle momenta into collective and intrinsic subspaces are achieved using projectors on so(3) and gl(3,R) algebra spaces. The separation of the N-particle kinetic energy into the corresponding collective and intrinsic components is then simply obtained. In the case of gl(3,R) the resulting intrinsic kinetic energy is expressed in terms of an appropriate subset of the generators of the direct product group SO(N)*SO(N). A detailed comparison of these results with those of other authors is given.