Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2020 ib Paper 1 16D Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
The electric potential of a point charge at the origin isFor the two charges forming the dipole,The first-order Taylor expansion at large isand therefore, with the electric dipole moment ,to leading order. Taking the interaction of a second dipole with the corresponding electric field gives the stated electric dipole-dipole interaction
Let the lattice spacing be and write the central dipole asIts two horizontal neighbours have moment . For either one, the expression in parentheses, after extracting , isIts two vertical neighbours have moment , and each contributes insteadAdding all four nearest-neighbour interactions and using the Pythagorean trigonometric identity givesThe angle has cancelled, so the energy is independent of .