Axilrod-Teller form, three-body

A simpler potential of the form of Eq. (10) has been used by Pearson et al. to model Si and SiC surfaces . The two-body term is of the familiar Lennard-Jones form while the three-body interaction is modeled by an Axilrod-Teller potential . The physical significance of this potential form is restricted to weakly bound systems, although it apparently can be extended to model covalent interactions. 

Alternative, three-body functions are provided by the triple-dipole formalism of Axilrod and Teller, which takes the form ... 

The dispersion energy is the universal attractive glue that leads to the formation of condensed phases. It is additive at second order in perturbation theory, and the form of the three-body term that arises at third order (the tripledipole dispersion term) is also well known from perturbation theory. This Axilrod-Teller term " was the only addition to the pair potential for argon that was required to quantitatively account for its solid and liquid state properties. This may be grounds for optimism that other nonadditive dispersion terms are negligible. Whether this can be extended to less symmetrical organic molecules and their typical crystalline and liquid environments has not yet been established however. 

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