Connection among classical interatomic potential functions

Abstract

The four classical interatomic pair potentials of Lennard-Jones [Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. A 106 (1924) 463], Morse [Phys. Rev. 34 (1929) 57], Rydberg [Z. Phys. 73, (1931) 376] and Buckingham [Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. A 168 (1938) 264] have been widely adopted in molecular force fields of computational chemistry softwares and also incorporated into 2-body potential energy description in many-body solid-state physics. This paper demonstrates how mathematical methods such as infinite series expansions can be used to connect parameters across these interatomic potential functions.