General Mathematical Properties
Multipole moments in mathematics and mathematical physics form an orthogonal basis for the decomposition of a function, based on the response of a field to point sources that are brought infinitely close to each other. These can be thought of as arranged in various geometrical shapes, or, in the sense of distribution theory, as directional derivatives.
In practice, many fields can be well approximated with a finite number of multipole moments (although an infinite number may be required to reconstruct a field exactly). A typical application is to approximate the field of a localized charge distribution by its monopole and dipole terms. Problems solved once for a given order of multipole moment may be linearly combined to create a final approximate solution for a given source.
Read more about this topic: Multipole Moment
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