Imaging van der Waals Interactions.

The van der Waals interactions are responsible for a large diversity of structures and functions in chemistry, biology, and materials. Discussion of van der Waals interactions has focused on the attractive potential energy that varies as the inverse power of the distance between the two interacting partners. The origin of the attractive force is widely discussed as being due to the correlated fluctuations of electron charges that lead to instantaneous dipole-induced dipole attractions. Here, we use the inelastic tunneling probe to image the potential energy surface associated with the van der Waals interactions of xenon atoms.