Accuracy of multipole expansion of density distribution in calculating the potential for deformed spherical interacting pair

The interaction potential for a deformed-spherical pair is calculated, and the error in using the truncated multipole expansion is evaluated for different numbers of terms of the expansion considered. It was found for the internal region of the nuclear part that three terms are sufficient, but for the surface and tail region up to five terms are necessary, while for the Coulomb potential three terms were found to be sufficient.