Pair potential
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In physics, a pair potential is a function that describes the potential energy of two interacting objects solely as a function of the distance between them. Some interactions, like Coulomb's law in electrodynamics or Newton's law of universal gravitation in mechanics naturally have this form for simple spherical objects. For other types of more complex interactions or objects it is useful and common to approximate the interaction by a pair potential, for example interatomic potentials in physics and computational chemistry that use approximations like the Lennard-Jones and Morse potentials.
In physics, a pair potential is a function that describes the potential energy of two interacting objects solely as a function of the distance between them. Some interactions, like Coulomb's law in electrodynamics or Newton's law of universal gravitation in mechanics naturally have this form for simple spherical objects. For other types of more complex interactions or objects it is useful and common to approximate the interaction by a pair potential, for example interatomic potentials in physics and computational chemistry that use approximations like the Lennard-Jones and Morse potentials. E=\frac12\sum_{i = 1}^N\sum_{j\neq i}^Nv\left(\left|\vec{R}_i - \vec{R}_j\right|\right)\ . Equivalently, this can be expressed as E=\sum_{i = 1}^N\sum_{j = i + 1}^Nv\left(\left|\vec{R}_i - \vec{R}_j\right|\right)\ . This expression uses the fact that interaction is symmetric between particles i and j . It also avoids self-interaction by not including the case where i = j .
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Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1371045647 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.