Spooky correlations and unusual van der Waals forces between gapless and near-gapless molecules

We consider the zero-temperature van der Waals (vdW) interaction between two molecules, each of which has a zero or near-zero electronic gap between a ground state and the first excited state, using a toy model molecule (equilateral H₃) as an example. We show that the van der Waals energy between two ground state molecules falls off as D^-3 instead of the usual D^-6 dependence, when the molecules are separated by distance D. We show that this is caused by a perfect "spooky" correlation between the two fluctuating electric dipoles. The phenomenon is related to, but not the same as, the "resonant" interaction between an electronically excited and a ground state molecule introduced by Eisenschitz and London in 1930. It is also an example of "type C van der Waals non-additivity" recently introduced by one of us [J. F. Dobson, Int. J. Quantum Chem. 114, 1157 (2014)]. Our toy molecule H₃ is not stable, but symmetry considerations suggest that a similar vdW phenomenon may be observable, despite Jahn-Teller effects, in molecules with a discrete rotational symmetry and broken inversion symmetry, such as certain metal atom clusters. The motion of the nuclei will need to be included for a definitive analysis of such cases, however.