Three-body contributions to the interaction energy of Ar3 have been calculated recently using the HF - CCSD(T) method and multiply augmented basis sets. Tests of new ab initio three-body potential for argon trimer are performed in this work. These tests consist in a comparison of several quantities we calculated with corresponding recent theoretical results and available experimental values. Recently published ab initio pair potential is used. The first part of the tests include data on rare-gas solids - a zero-temperature binding energy, lattice constant, and crystal structure. The second part of the tests is focused on the third virial coefficient - one of thermodynamic quantities which are influenced exclusively by two and three-body intermolecular interactions. In addition, the solid and gas phase properties considered are also calculated using semiempirical pair potential and simple Axilrod-Teller three-body term for comparison.

Three-body contributions to the interaction energy of Ar3 have been calculated recently using the HF - CCSD(T) method and multiply augmented basis sets. Tests of new ab initio three-body potential for argon trimer are performed in this work. These tests consist in a comparison of several quantities we calculated with corresponding recent theoretical results and available experimental values. Recently published ab initio pair potential is used. The first part of the tests include data on rare-gas solids - a zero-temperature binding energy, lattice constant, and crystal structure. The second part of the tests is focused on the third virial coefficient - one of thermodynamic quantities which are influenced exclusively by two and three-body intermolecular interactions. In addition, the solid and gas phase properties considered are also calculated using semiempirical pair potential and simple Axilrod-Teller three-body term for comparison.