Triplet dipoles in the absorption spectra of dense rare gas fluids. II. Long range interactions

Abstract

A model calculation is presented to evaluate the long range dispersion dipole occurring when three nonoverlapping dissimilar atoms interact. Deviation from pairwise additivity is taken into account by a simplified theory based on electrostatic arguments. By comparing the long range triplet dispersion dipole with the one resulting from exchange overlap effects previously investigated [J. Chem. Phys. 90, 650 (1989)], it is shown that a cancellation between both contributions occurs in the vicinity of the van der Waals separation. The far infrared spectra of dense rare gas fluids are next generated by molecular dynamics simulation including long range dispersion and short range overlap dipoles. An estimate of the expected absorption in liquid krypton is given, αmax =3.6×10−9 cm−1 am−2, which might give some hope to experimentalists. As far as rare gas mixtures are concerned, the model calculation reproduces surprisingly well the experimental absolute spectral density of a Kr–Ar liquid mixture (15% Kr, 135 K) over a large domain of frequency but fails to reproduce the low frequency dip. Nevertheless, irreducible three-body dipoles contribute significantly to the spectrum. The difficulty of obtaining accurate results from an approximate model is emphasized and a guideline for further improvements is sketched.