On the multipole structure of exchange dispersion energy in the interaction of two helium atoms

The exchange dispersion energy for the interaction of two helium atoms is expressed as a sum of multipole components. In contrast to the analogous expansion for the dispersion energy the derived series converges very slowly and the rate of convergence does not improve with an increasing interatomic distance. Numerical calculations show that at the van der Waals minimum the first term of the series, referred to as dipole-dipole exchange energy, represents merely 17 per cent of the exchange dispersion energy. Moreover, even the inclusion of dipole-quadrupole and quadrupole-quadrupole terms can account for only half of the total exchange dispersion interaction. The above difficulty can be avoided by expanding the dispersion pair function in terms of ionic type or explicitly correlated functions.