physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

, a pair potential is a function that describes the potential energy of two interacting objects solely as a function of the distance between them. Examples of pair potentials include the

Coulomb's law Coulomb's inverse-square law, or simply Coulomb's law, is an experimental law of physics that quantifies the amount of force between two stationary, electrically charged particles. The electric force between charged bodies at rest is convention ...

electrodynamics In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions o ...

Newton's law of universal gravitation Newton's law of universal gravitation is usually stated as that every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distan ...

mechanics Mechanics (from Ancient Greek: μηχανική, ''mēkhanikḗ'', "of machines") is the area of mathematics and physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among physical objects. Forces applied to object ...

, and the Lennard-Jones potential and the

Morse potential The Morse potential, named after physicist Philip M. Morse, is a convenient interatomic interaction model for the potential energy of a diatomic molecule. It is a better approximation for the vibrational structure of the molecule than the qua ...

in computational chemistry. Pair potentials are very common in physics and computational chemistry and biology; exceptions are very rare. An example of a potential energy function that is ''not'' a pair potential is the three-body Axilrod-Teller potential. Another example is the Stillinger-Weber potential for

silicon Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic ta ...

, which includes the angle in a triangle of silicon atoms as an input parameter.

References

Mechanics Electricity Computational chemistry Intermolecular forces Quantum mechanical potentials Theoretical chemistry {{physics-stub