Two-dimensional three-body dipole-quadrupole interactions

Van der Waals interactions, or dipole-dipole interactions, are very common interactions between atoms. Since atoms have quadrupole moments, there are dipole-quadrupole interactions between atoms. If there are two atoms, we treat one atom as a dipole and the other atom as a quadrupole. The interactions between those two atoms are dipole-quadrupole interactions. Two-body dipole-quadrupole interactions have been investigated since the 1960s. However, three-dimensional few-body dipole-quadrupole interactions are relatively less studied. In this article, the formalisms for three-dimensional dipole-quadrupole interactions are given. In addition, two-dimensional three-body pairwise dipole-quadrupole interactions are examined. Specifically, we study the dipole-quadrupole interactions among three atoms located at the three vertices of a triangle. This research has many applications, such as creating dipole-quadrupole coupled molecules, manufacturing more compact quantum computers, producing plasma, and constructing quantum sensors.