Abstract
The Lennard-Jones interatomic potential for spherically symmetric particles is given by U(r)=M/rm-N/rn, where r is the separation of the centres of the particles, and M and N are positive constants. The classical second virial coefficient for such a gas is evaluated in closed form for the case m=2n, in terms of the parabolic cylinder functions. To leading order, dipole-dipole interactions give n=6, so these results are applicable to the case m=12, which is fortuitously close to the best empirical value.

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