View article

We present a new method for approximating two-body interatomic potentials from existing ab initio data based on representing the unknown function as an analytic continued fraction. In this study, our method was first inspired by a representation of the unknown potential as a Dirichlet polynomial, i.e., the partial sum of some terms of a Dirichlet series. Our method allows for a close and computationally efficient approximation of the ab initio data for the noble gases Xenon (Xe), Krypton (Kr), Argon (Ar), and Neon (Ne), which are proportional to and to a very simple truncated continued fraction with integer coefficients and depending on only, where n is a natural number (with for Xe, for Kr, for Ar, and for Neon). For Helium (He), the data is well approximated with a function having only one variable with and a truncated continued fraction with (i.e., the third convergent of the …