Evaluation of the intermolecular energy between two hydrogen molecules near the van der Waals minimum, from a perturbative procedure

The intermolecular energy between two hydrogen molecules is evaluated from the electrostatic, repulsive, and dispersion contributions, which are supposed to be the leading terms. Calculations have been carried out for four configurations of H2–H2 and the results averaged, these latter values being compared with the available experimental data. Theoretical and experimental results are in fairly good agreement.