A unified formalism for many-body polarization and dispersion: The quantum Drude model applied to fluid xenon

In order to model both the full many-body polarization and dispersion interactions in atomic and molecular systems, a system of quantized Drude oscillators is introduced. The quantization is carried out using imaginary-time path integration, leading to an O ( N ) simulation method. As a test case, the model is parameterized for xenon, and is shown to give quantitative agreement with experiment over a broad range of thermodynamic state points.