The many-body problem for a system of composite particles is formulated in a way which takes explicit account of the composite nature of these particles and allows a clear separation between interatomic and intraatomic interactions. A second-quantization representation, fully equivalent to the conventional representation in which nuclei and electrons appear explicitly, is developed in terms of atomic annihilation and creation operators satisfying elementary Bose or Fermi commutation relations. All effects of the composite nature of the atoms are exactly contained in the interatomic and intraatomic matrix elements and in certain exchange integrals. An application is made to the problem of Bose condensation of fermion pairs.
Presented herein is a second-quantized formulation for a system of interacting nuclei and electrons expressed in terms of the creation and annihilation operators of various species of atoms and ions which can be formed by combining various numbers of the "elementary" particles. Processes such as ionization and recombination appear naturally. Explicit expressions for interatomic forces including exchange effects are generated from a "cluster expansion" reminiscent of the Ursell expansion.