Pair potential

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In mechanics, a pair potential is a function that describes the potential energy of two interacting objects. Examples of pair potentials include the Coulomb's law, Newton's law of universal gravitation, the Lennard-Jones potential and the Morse potential.

Pair potentials are very common in physics; exceptions are very rare. An example of a potential energy function that is not a pair potential is the three-body Axilrod-Teller potential.