Multipole moments symmetry dependence

Although the spherical form of the multipole expansion is definitely superior if the orientational dependence of the electrostatic, induction, or dispersion energies is of interest, the Cartesian form171-174 may be useful. Mutual transformations between the spherical and Cartesian forms of the multipole moment and (hyper)polarizability tensors have been derived by Gray and Lo175. The symmetry-adaptation of the Cartesian tensors of quadrupole, octupole, and hexadecapole moments to all 51 point groups can be found in Ref. (176) while the symmetry-adaptation of the Cartesian tensors of multipole (hyper)polarizabilities to simple point groups has been considered in Refs. (172-175). 

Both photon-assisted collisions and collision-induced absorption deal with transitions which occur because a dipole moment is induced in a collisional pair. The induction proceeds, for example, via the polarization of B in the electric multipole field of A. A variety of photon-assisted collisions exist for example, the above mentioned LICET or pair absorption process, or the induction of a transition which is forbidden in the isolated atom [427], All of these photon-assisted collision processes are characterized by long-range transition dipoles which vary with separation, R, as R n with n — 3 or 4, depending on the symmetry of the states involved. Collision-induced spectra, on the other hand, frequently arise from quadrupole (n = 4), octopole (n = 5) and hexadecapole (n = 6) induction, as we have seen. At near range, a modification of the inverse power law due to electron exchange is often quite noticeable. The importance of such overlap terms has been demonstrated for the forbidden oxygen —> lD emission induced by collision with rare gases [206] and... 

Let us now imagine that the function p(0,axial symmetry with respect to the z-axis, as, e.g., in Fig. 4.1(6), and that it is created by pulsed excitation at t = 0. In this case its expansion over multipoles includes transversal polarization moments pq (these are complex quantities) where Q 0. If the precession frequency uj< is much larger than the relaxation rate, then the components pQ will depend on time, in the time scale wj,1, following (4.9), according to the simple harmonic law ... 

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