Angular reduction in multiparticle matrix elements

A general method for reduction of coupled spherical harmonic products is presented. When the total angular coupling is zero, the reduction leads to an explicitly real expression in the scalar products of the unit vector arguments of the spherical harmonics. For nonscalar couplings, the reduction gives Cartesian tensor forms for the spherical harmonic products; tensors built from the physical vectors in the original expression. The reduction for arbitrary couplings is given in closed form, making it amenable to symbolic manipulation on a computer. The final expressions do not depend on a special choice of coordinate axes, nor do they contain azimuthal quantum number summations, or do they have complex tensor terms for couplings to a scalar; consequently, they are easily interpretable from the properties of the physical vectors they contain.