Nuclear many-body calculations are computationally demanding. An estimate of
their accuracy is often hampered by the limited amount of computational
resources even on present-day supercomputers. We provide an extrapolation
method based on perturbation theory, so that the binding energy of a large
basis-space calculation can be estimated without diagonalizing the Hamiltonian
in this space. The extrapolation method is tested for 3H and 6Li nuclei. It
will extend our computational abilities significantly and allow for reliable
error estimates.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, PRC accepte