Transverse dipole-dipole effective interaction for sheet arrangements

We have succeeded to develop a model pair interaction which when added to a system of interacting particles can be tuned to arrange the interacting objects into sheets. The interaction is based on the decomposition of the dipole-dipole interaction into two components, one parallel and one perpendicular to the connecting line between the dipoles, and keeping only perpendicular part here. Various aspects of this simple interaction are discussed, in particular in connection to two recent papers on self assembly of carbon nanostructures. On the other hand, the features discussed are quite general and might be of interest in different areas of microscopic modeling.