  The method of effective interaction, traditionally used in the framework of
an harmonic oscillator basis, is applied to the hyperspherical formalism of
few-body nuclei (A=3-6). The separation of the hyperradial part leads to a
state dependent effective potential. Undesirable features of the harmonic
oscillator approach associated with the introduction of a spurious confining
potential are avoided. It is shown that with the present method one obtains an
enormous improvement of the convergence of the hyperspherical harmonics series
in calculating ground state properties, excitation energies and transitions to
continuum states.
