We apply the generator coordinate method (GCM) to single-Λ hypernuclei in order to discuss the spectra of hypernuclear low-lying states. To this end, we use the same relativistic point-coupling energy functional both for the mean-field and the beyond-mean-field calculations. This relativistic GCM approach provides a unified description of low-lying states in ordinary nuclei and in hypernuclei, and is thus suitable for studying the Λ impurity effect. We carry out an illustrative calculation for the low-lying spectrum of 21 Λ Ne, in which the interplay between the hypernuclear collective excitations and the single-particle excitations of the unpaired Λ hyperon is taken into account in a full microscopic manner.PACS numbers: 21.80.+a, 21.60.Jz, In the past decades, many high-resolution γ-ray spectroscopy experiments have been carried out for Λ hypernuclei. The experimental data on energy spectra and electric multipole transition strengths have been accumulated, providing rich information on a hyperon-nucleon interaction in the nuclear medium as well as the impurity effect of the Λ particle on the structure of atomic nuclei [1,2]. It is noteworthy that the next-generation facility J-PARC has already been in operation [3], opening up a new opportunity to perform high precision hypernuclear γ-ray spectroscopy studies. These experiments will shed light on low-lying states of hypernuclei, especially those of medium and heavy hypernuclei.From the theoretical side, the hypernuclear low-lying states have been studied mainly with a shell model [4][5][6] and with a cluster and few-body models [7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. In recent years, several other methods have also been developed for hypernuclear spectroscopy, including an abinitio method [14], the antisymmetrized molecular dynamics (AMD) [15][16][17], and the microscopic particlerotor model based on the covariant density functional theory [18,19]. The angular momentum projection (but with the scheme of variation-before-projection) for the total hypernuclear wave function has also been carried out with the Skyrme density functional [20], even though the important effect of configuration mixing was not taken into account.In this paper, we propose a generator coordinate method (GCM) for the whole hypernucleus based on a relativistic energy density functional. To this end, we superpose a set of hypernuclear mean-field states projected onto the states with good quantum numbers of the particle number and the angular momentum. Such configura- * Present address: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27516-3255, USA tion mixing effect was missing in Ref. [20], and thus our calculation serves as one of the most advanced beyondmean-field methods for the spectroscopy of hypernuclear low-lying states. In contrast to the microscopic particlerotor model developed in Refs. [18,19], where the GCM calculation is carried out only for the core nucleus, all the nucleons and the hyperon are treated on the same footing in the present appr...