The depolarization interaction of adsorbed non‐polar molecules

The depolarizing interaction between two non‐polar molecules, on a metal surface, is investigated. It is found that the classical depolarizing field between two dipole moments is sufficient to describe the interaction for spherically symmetric molecules or atoms. However the effective polarizability should be used instead of the free atom polarizability. For an anisotropic molecule there is a correction to the classical result of up to about twenty percent at a monolayer coverage.