Influence of retardation on the higher-order multipole dispersion contributions to the helium dimer potential

Abstract

In this note, we evaluate the influence of the relativistic retardation corrections on the dipole–quadrupole, dipole–octupole and quadrupole–quadrupole contributions to the He–He dispersion potential, which affect the attractive r −8 and r −10 terms. These higher-order corrections influence the binding energy of 4He2 an order of magnitude less than does the retardation correction to the leading r −6 dipole–dipole term.