  In this work we show results for light nuclear systems and small clusters of
helium atoms using the hyperspherical harmonics basis. We use the basis without
previous symmetrization or antisymmetrization of the state. After the
diagonalization of the Hamiltonian matrix, the eigenvectors have well defined
symmetry under particle permutation and the identification of the physical
states is possible. We show results for systems composed up to six particles.
As an example of a fermionic system, we consider a nucleon system interacting
through the Volkov potential, used many times in the literature. For the case
of bosons, we consider helium atoms interacting through a potential model which
does not present a strong repulsion at short distances. We have used an
attractive gaussian potential to reproduce the values of the dimer binding
energy, the atom-atom scattering length, and the effective range obtained with
one of the most widely used He-He interaction, the LM2M2 potential. In
addition, we include a repulsive hypercentral three-body force to reproduce the
trimer binding energy.
