The Axilrod–Teller potential is a three-body potential that results from a third-order perturbation correction to the attractive London dispersion interactions (instantaneous induced dipole-induced dipole)
![V_{ijk}= E_{0} left[
frac{1 + 3 cosgamma_{i} cosgamma_{j} cosgamma_{k}}{left( r_{ij} r_{jk} r_{ik} right)^3}
right]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/5/e/a/5ead673a6117f7037761993109db9b9f.png)
where is the distance between atoms and, and is the angle between the vectors and . The coefficient is positive and of the order, where is the ionization energy and is the mean atomic polarizability; the exact value of depends on the magnitudes of the dipole matrix elements and on the energies of the orbitals.
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